A Court of Appeal judge said a fraud allegation brought by two taxpayers against Revenue was “just hopeless” and “should never have been made”, after the taxpayers maintained it through an appeal concerning Revenue’s arrangement with its solicitors.
Mr Justice O’Moore delivered the comments on 28 March 2025 in two linked appeals brought by Una McClean and Paul Howard. The central appeal issue was whether Revenue’s arrangement with its solicitors was champertous and, if so, what consequences followed. O’Moore J said he agreed with Mr Justice Binchy’s judgment on that issue and addressed the fraud allegation as a secondary matter.
The taxpayers alleged that Revenue would misrepresent its legal costs if it presented bills seeking sums greater than the amounts it had paid its solicitors. O’Moore J noted that no bill of costs had been presented to either taxpayer by the time of the appeal. He said they knew the terms of Revenue’s arrangement: the contract had been available on Revenue’s website and was provided to their solicitors on request. They could also argue before a costs adjudicator that any bill should be reduced because of that arrangement.
The High Court had already rejected the fraud claim as “unstateable”. It recorded that the taxpayers had accessed the contract online and obtained a copy from Revenue on request. O’Moore J said the appeal notice and written submissions did not engage with the reasoning behind that conclusion, and he found the complaints about how the contract was obtained to be without merit.
He said the allegation could not be sustained on the facts of the cases, where the taxpayers knew about the arrangement. He criticised its continued pursuit in the High Court and Court of Appeal submissions, and said speculative fraud claims based on hypothetical circumstances were not permissible.
O’Moore J discussed possible responses courts could consider when groundless fraud allegations are made, including referral to a professional body, costs on a higher basis, and potential orders against lawyers in some circumstances. These were options discussed in general terms; the supplied judgment pages do not record such an order being made in these appeals. The central champerty issue is addressed in Binchy J’s judgment, whose outcome is not set out in the supplied extract.