Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
A SIX-YEAR-OLD schoolboy, who broke his left wrist after falling in a pothole in his garden, has been awarded €10,000 damages in the Circuit Civil Court and may have a new home for Christmas.
Barrister Seosaimhin Ni Chathasaigh, counsel for Daniel Maguire, who sued Dublin City Council through his mother Kelly Ann Kenny, told the court that the family had considered the house unfit for human habitation when they moved into the property at Cashel Avenue, Crumlin, Dublin.
The unfit for human habitation allegation, which had been denied by Dublin City Council, was today rejected by Circuit Court President Mr Justice Raymond Groarke. The council had also claimed the family had an obligation to maintain its own garden.
Judge Groarke was told the local authority had made a €10,000 settlement offer without admission of liability. Ms Ní Chathasaigh asked the court to assess whether or not the offer was an appropriate one.
Ms Ní Chathasaigh told the judge that when Ms Kenny, her seven children and her partner Thomas Maguire moved into the house in September 2009 they had not been allowed to inspect it before signing an agreement.
Ms Kenny told Ms Ni Chathasaigh that the family had previously been living in a homeless shelter and had wanted to leave it as soon as possible. She claimed she had only been shown the house sitting room and kitchen through one of its windows but had decided to sign the agreement anyway.
Mr Maguire told the court that it was only after the family had moved in that they had discovered the back garden, in which grass had grown very high, had holes everywhere.
He claimed the garden was regularly used for dumping by unknown people who threw nappies, beer bottles and barbed wire over the fence. The court heard that on one occasion, the garden had been set on fire.
Ms Ni Chathasaigh told the court the children were not allowed to play in the back garden, but Daniel, who was two years old at the time, had followed his mother when she had gone out to hang clothes on the line in October 2010.
He had fallen in a pothole and had been taken to the A&E of Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital in Crumlin, where X-rays revealed a fracture to his left wrist. He had needed to wear a cast for several weeks.
Ms Ni Chathasaigh said that after the family had complained to the local authority the council had claimed it did not have the funds to repair the garden.
Judge Groarke, approving the €10,000 settlement offer by Dublin City Council, said he was satisfied it was a good and fair offer. He said potholes in a garden did not make a house unfit for human habitation.
The judge heard the family had since moved out of the house while awaiting a new home and were currently living in a caravan.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
God help the people of Iran, they brought down the Shah for a Religious leader and hopefully now the table will turn in favour for them. As the Shah said that having Mullahs in power would turn Iran back 1,500 year’s and he was right.
@Mick McGuinness: It is only the weak who seek to control minds through fear, controlling women out of fear of the body God gave them. What weakness is in their logic to impose upon a woman the impression of an inferior being, who gave birth to the man, without who, they (Men) would not exist.
@Mick McGuinness: the shah did a good job of that himself. What a disposable puppet of London and Washington.
This is horrific. Can’t believe this sort of thing still happens in parts of the world. Morality police????? Awful!!!!!!
@Anna Carr: happens in China too for everyone
@Billybutcher: :(
@Anna Carr: reminds me of Holy Catholic Ireland and the network of institutions that they ran right up to the 1990s
@Paul Jude Redmond: Ah stop. Nobody was killed here for not wearing a head scarf
@DK: Try getting pregnant without being married. Then you would know a fate far worse than being killed.
Religion whats that all about . Fables and made up stories.Cant we be honest with ourselfes, we live we die gods are make believe. Live be as happy as possible, the world would be a better place without these imagined gods.
@Boots1220: everyone has a religion – what’s yours ? Veganism, anti-Israel, Man Utd…. Christianity is actually a good religion at its core
@Virgil: i’d nail them all to the cross
@Virgil: oblivion, nothingness, works for me!
Poverty and RELIGION go hand in hand in 3rd world.
@Michael Heery: don’t we know it. Regarding headwear, if my mother had gone to mass without wearing a headscarf she would have become the local pariah
@alan: Not mandatory, to wear a Scarf in our Mother’s Day, not beaten to death, or arrested.
@ÓDuibhír Abú: Perhaps not but branded as a “hussey”? Most definitely. Up to the 1960s and early-mid 70s, Irish society and Catholicism were the greatest enemies of women who didn’t toe the line eg. by covering their heads, albeit loosely, in church.
Only since 1983, imagine.. Iran should be leading the Middle East forward, not in a western way but in a Persian way.
No reason why the average Iranian is not wealthy and educated like once maybe they were, before 1983 perhaps
All religion is evil all about control the masses believe in your own God and be a good person and that’s it
Jeez the bots are out in force here tonight.
For it is culture boss man
have your say