A woman alleged to have operated "a drugs supermarket" from her home has taken a High Court challenge to an order evicting her from her Cork Corporation home.
Last May, Circuit Court Judge John Clifford upheld a District Court order granting the corporation an exclusion order against Mrs Helen Heaphy of Rathpeacon Road, Cork, on the basis that she was engaged in alleged anti-social behaviour.
But, in the High Court yesterday, Mr Justice Geoghegan granted leave to Mrs Heaphy to challenge the order and said this would effectively act as a stay on further proceedings against her.
Mr Frank Buttimer of Washington Street, Cork, solicitor for Mrs Heaphy, said in an affidavit that after the District Judge concluded there were reasonable grounds for believing Mrs Heaphy was engaged in anti-social behaviour, she appealed the matter to the Circuit Court.
At that court, evidence was given that a notice to quit had been served on Mrs Heaphy and a demand made for possession of her home. The reason given for possession was that it was alleged her dwelling house was a "drugs supermarket" for the sale and supply of drugs.
Mr Buttimer said an official of Cork Corporation gave evidence of having visited the dwelling house on a number of occasions as a result of complaints made by persons not prepared to give their names. Mr Buttimer said garda evidence was given that a quantity of ecstasy tablets, LSD and "hash" was found on the premises in September 1995 although on a number of other occasions no drugs were found.
The solicitor also said a garda witness had acknowledged that Mrs Heaphy's husband had only one previous conviction in relation to drugs.
Mrs Heaphy had said she was a mother of seven children, two of them partially deaf and another suffering from epilepsy. She denied there was a stream of people constantly calling to her home and seeking her husband.
However, Judge Clifford had affirmed the order of the District Court.
Yesterday, Mr Brendan Grogan SC, for Mrs Heaphy, said there was no evidence that anyone arrested and searched after leaving his client's premises was found to have drugs. His client had been left in the house between December 1995 and October 1998 before action was taken against her.
In addition to challenging the exclusion order, Mr Grogan is seeking a declaration that sections of the 1997 Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, used to obtain the order against Mrs Heaphy, were a violation of her constitutional rights in that they permitted an opinion by a garda or an official of the corporation to be received in evidence.
Such opinion evidence was an unwarranted interference in a judicial function and/or a violation of the applicant's right to fairness of procedures, he argued. Similar rights were not given to Mrs Heaphy, giving rise to an unjustifiable inequality between the parties.