The High Court has rejected Angela Kerins’ judicial review challenge over statements made about her during two Public Accounts Committee (PAC) hearings in 2014, holding that parliamentary privilege placed those statements outside the court’s jurisdiction.
The judgment, delivered by a Divisional Court on 31 January 2017, addresses a preliminary module of the case. The Court of Appeal had deferred any damages issue until this module was decided. The High Court therefore did not determine whether Ms Kerins was entitled to damages.
Ms Kerins, then chief executive of the Rehab Group, attended the PAC voluntarily on 27 February 2014. The committee questioned her for about seven hours on topics including Rehab’s public funding and her salary. The court recorded her complaint that much of the questioning went beyond the matters notified to her in advance and damaged her personal and professional reputation. At a meeting on 10 April, held without her, PAC members made further critical statements about her and her role at Rehab.
The committee had no legal power to compel Ms Kerins to attend or answer questions at those hearings. Later, the Committee on Procedure and Privileges refused the PAC’s application for compellability powers, finding that an examination into Rehab’s internal affairs would be beyond the PAC’s authority because no relevant account or report had been presented to the Dáil. The court said that decision ended the PAC’s further pursuit of the matter.
Ms Kerins sought declarations that the PAC’s conduct was unlawful and biased, removal of references to her from the PAC record, and damages. The court concluded that the jurisdiction issue did not arise: her attendance and participation had not been secured through legal powers, and the PAC had not made legally binding findings about her. The court characterised the statements complained of as members’ expressions of opinion without legal force.
It held that Article 15.13 of the Constitution prevented courts from reviewing committee members’ utterances, including by examining their tone, content or alleged bias. The judgment said the Oireachtas itself was responsible for protecting rights in proceedings that were not justiciable. The Court concluded that the claim must fail. The judgment did not decide the deferred damages issue or grant the requested relief.