Ms Peggi Tee, a Malaysian woman who moved to Ireland with her daughter, an Irish citizen, had her application for emergency homeless accommodation refused by Wicklow County Council.

This decision has now been backed by the High Court after Mr Justice Noonan stated that since the applicants chose to leave their home in Malaysia, and were still able to live there, that they did not satisfy the definition of “homeless” under the Housing Act 1988.

Ms Tee and her daughter Aishling travelled from Malaysia to Ireland in June 2016. Both applicants are Malaysian citizens, and since Aishling’s father is an Irish citizen (residing in Malaysia) she is entitled to Irish citizenship.

In the High Court, Justice Noonan pointed out that Ms Tee graduated from Bond University, a prestigious institution in Australia, with a degree in business. Her family ran a distribution business in Malaysia in which she was employed as a sales manager although she ceased her employment there in January 2016 when the business closed.

Ms Tee asserted that the reason she came to Ireland was to secure suitable second level education for Aishling, which she considered not available to persons of her ethnicity in Malaysia.

Ms Tee said that her funds began to run out in February 2017, and as a result, she and Aishling resorted to sleeping in her rented car for over two weeks; until they came to the notice of An Garda Síochána who put them in touch with a woman’s refuge in Bray. Since then, the applicants have been accommodated by a variety of NGOs and charitable institutions and have had to sleep in a Garda station on a number of occasions.

In February 2017, Ms Tee applied to be put on Wicklow County Council’s housing list, and a meeting took place between Ms Tee and council officials on April 4.

Ms Tee insisted she told the council that she had a retirement fund in Malaysia but she could not access it either until retirement age or if earlier, on certain conditions which did not arise.

The council then gave its reasons for refusing; in particular, the council emphasised the €40,000 in an employee’s fund, that her family ran a business in Malaysia, and that Ms Tee’s mother had “recently purchased a five-bedroomed property”.

In presenting the applicant’s case, Ms Tee’s solicitor claimed that the family were entitled to have emergency accommodation provided to them by the council having a statutory obligation to provide such accommodation under the terms of the Housing Act 1988; and a right to such accommodation by virtue of the Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights Act 2003.

However, Justice Noonan stated that the fact that the applicants had no home in Ireland, but could live with Ms Tee’s mother in Malaysia, did not require the council to form the opinion that they were homeless.

Justice Noonan added “…it would clearly be absurd, for example, to suggest that a person who enjoys the benefit of a comfortable residence a few miles across the border in Northern Ireland is homeless because he or she has nowhere to live in the State. It could hardly be suggested that every tourist who comes to Ireland and has the misfortune to run out of money while here is entitled to emergency homeless accommodation, be they an Irish citizen or not”.