The High Court has refused the Irish Coursing Club’s application for an interim order that would have allowed coursing events to resume behind closed doors during COVID-19 Level 5 restrictions.
In a judgment delivered on 25 January 2021, Ms Justice Niamh Hyland said the club had sufficiently strong arguments at this stage about whether relevant ministers should have been consulted and whether reasons should have been given for removing its exemption. She stressed that these were interlocutory assessments and did not decide the merits of the underlying judicial review.
The club is challenging the decision to remove coursing from the list of sports allowed to operate during restrictions. It had been exempted under regulations that took effect on 1 December 2020, when the State was at Level 3. Twelve events took place before Christmas. Regulations made after the Government decided to return to Level 5 removed that exemption, while retaining exemptions for certain horse and greyhound racing events.
The club argued that the Health Minister should have consulted the Ministers for Agriculture, Food and the Marine and for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, and that it was entitled to reasons after seeking them. The respondents disputed that the law required the specific consultations or individualised reasons. The judge considered the consultation and reasons arguments sufficiently strong to meet the threshold for interim relief, without resolving them.
The injunction sought would have required the Minister to permit coursing in the same way as the listed sports. Justice Hyland held that this was mandatory relief that would effectively require the Minister to make regulations in specified terms. She concluded that the court had no jurisdiction to compel that step, which would require the Minister to act under the Health Act while potentially preventing him from carrying out statutory duties to consider public health matters and consultation.
She also refused relief on the balance of convenience. The respondents’ public health expert evidence identified increased transmission risks associated with coursing. The judge noted that 36 meetings involving about 3,600 entries would be affected, and accepted the club’s evidence of efforts to comply with COVID-19 measures. She weighed those risks against the financial effects on breeders, trainers and owners, and potential animal welfare consequences if the short season was lost. She concluded that granting the injunction carried the greater risk of injustice, including possible risk to human life.
The order refused only the interlocutory injunction. The substantive judicial review remained unresolved in this judgment.