Supporting Documents:
041-2019. AFL.pdf

BETWEEN

APPLICATION FOR LEAVE TO APPEAL TO WHICH ARTICLE 34.5.3° OF THE CONSTITUTION APPLIES

RESULT: The court does not grant leave to the applicant to appeal to this court from the Court of Appeal.

ORDER SOUGHT TO BE APPEALED:

COURT: Court of Appeal

DATE OF JUDGMENT OR RULING: 25th February 2019

DATE OF ORDER: 25th February 2019

DATE OF PERFECTION OF ORDER: 25th February 2019

THE APPLICATION FOR LEAVE TO APPEAL WAS MADE ON 5th March 2019 AND WAS IN TIME.

REASONS GIVEN:

General considerations
1 The general principles applied by this court in determining whether to grant or refuse leave to appeal, having regard to the criteria incorporated into the Constitution as a result of the Thirty-third Amendment have now been considered in a large number of determinations and are fully addressed in both a determination issued by a panel consisting of all of the members of this court in B.S. v. Director of Public Prosecutions [2017] IESCDET 134, (Unreported, Supreme Court, 6 December 2017) and in a unanimous judgment of a full court delivered by O’Donnell J. in Quinn Insurance Ltd. v. PricewaterhouseCoopers [2017] IESC 73, [2017] 3 I.R. 812. Accordingly, it is unnecessary to revisit the new constitutional architecture for the purpose of this determination.

2 The facts in issue here are apparent from the application for leave published along with this determination, and from the judgment of the Court of Appeal, which is publicly available. Accordingly, it is not necessary to set out the underlying facts in detail. No aspect of this ruling has precedential value as a matter of law.

Decision
3 The applicant’s complaint is that she contends the Labour Court wrongly dismissed her appeal against the decision of the Adjudication Officer of 4 August 2016. She contended that the order of the Labour Court was invalid, because the copy with which she was provided was not signed in writing by the chairman of the division of the Labour Court. It was also argued that the decision was unreasonable or irrational.

4 The application for leave to seek judicial review was dismissed by the High Court (Noonan J.) on 31 October 2018, and that decision was upheld by the Court of Appeal (Peart, Edwards, and Whelan JJ.) on 25 February 2019.

5 In her application for leave, the applicant contends that the Court of Appeal or the High Court should have assessed whether she had a sufficient interest in the decision, and whether she had an arguable case and reasonable grounds to succeed. It is suggested that the court “advocated” for the Labour Court.

6 It is apparent from the matters set out by the applicant that the decisions of the High Court and Court of Appeal involved the application of the standard test to be applied for the grant of leave to seek judicial review. The test involved is now well settled. It is not a high threshold, and the decision sought to be appealed is no more than the application of that test to the claims sought to be advanced by the applicant. Accordingly, the application does not raise any ground of general public importance. The court is also satisfied that it has not been established that it is in the interests of justice that an appeal should be brought to this court. Accordingly, the application is dismissed.

And it is hereby so ordered accordingly.