Mother challenges law that stops daughter buying house

Date Published: {J}

By Darragh Mc Donagh

A Galway mother is calling for a change to the law that has prevented her teenage daughter from buying a house in her own name because she has Down syndrome.

Phil Kennedy of Waterlane in Bohermore claims the law clearly conflicts with the constitutional principle of equality, but fears that the stress of a protracted legal challenge would be fatally damaging to her ill health.

Parents Phil Kennedy and local author Ken Bruen wanted to buy another house in Waterlane for their only daughter, Grace (17), so that she could continue to live independently. However, the law prevents a person with Down syndrome from being a party to such a transaction.

“I’m nearly 62 and she’s nearly 18, and I’ve had cancer twice,” said Phil. “It’s very important that I see how she fares out and whatever she needs, we can put in place for her.

“I don’t have the health for a constitutional challenge. I would be able to do it; I would also win it. But it would also kill me,” she added. “I’ve fought too many battles and I’m not able to fight anymore.”

She is now calling for support in her bid to change an area of the law that she says is archaic and inconsistent with modern equality ideals.

“Down syndrome is a condition, it is not a description,” she insisted. “I have had cancer twice but I didn’t become it. What makes Grace different is that she looks her condition, and we are being punished for making her independent.”

The problem stems from a legal assumption that a person with the condition is not mentally competent to enter into legally binding contracts. However, Phil claims there is much inconsistency in the area of law.

She recalled that the man from whom she bought her home in Waterlane was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and “didn’t even know he was selling it”.

“He was in a nursing home with Alzheimer’s but was brought to outside the Victoria Hotel where the auction was being held to sign the contract with his solicitors,” she said. “He hadn’t a clue where he was and he certainly didn’t know that his house had been sold.”

Phil has been informed by her solicitors that a similar case involving a man with autism who was stopped from buying a home because he was deemed to be mentally incompetent is currently being examined.

Grace passed her Junior Certificate exams at the Convent of Mercy last year and is currently on work placement during Transition Year at the city school. Her efforts to buy a home in her own name ended last Friday when her father purchased the house at Waterlane.

Her mother is calling on equality groups and Down syndrome organisations to help her bring about change in the area. “Shame on them that they never challenged this,” she said. “Nobody seems to know that the situation exists.”