The Supreme Court has ordered former CIE signalman Michael J Scanlon to repay £43,088.25 in disability benefit after overturning a High Court decision which had dismissed the Minister’s recovery claim.
Mr Scanlon stopped working for Córas Iompair Éireann in July 1985 because of failing eyesight. He was awarded disability benefit from September 24, 1985 and received payments totalling £43,088.25 up to May 25, 1994.
His entitlement was reviewed in 1994. A Deciding Officer initially concluded that he had been working throughout the period and that the payments had been obtained through false or misleading representations or concealment of material facts.
Mr Scanlon appealed. Following an oral hearing, the Appeals Officer found that he had been involved in a school bus service, a hackney car business and the ownership and operation of a public house. She rejected his claim that he owned the businesses without taking part in running them.
However, the Appeals Officer did not uphold the finding of fraud. She said she was not fully satisfied that Mr Scanlon had knowingly made false or misleading statements. Instead, she concluded on new evidence that he had been working, was not entitled to the benefit and that the payments should be refunded.
The Minister sued in 1997. The High Court rejected the claim, holding in part that legislative changes expanding recovery powers should not operate retrospectively and that a fresh demand for repayment should have followed the appeal decision.
Mr Justice Fennelly, giving the Supreme Court judgment, disagreed on each point. He held that a 1992 provision made clear that the revised-decision regime could apply to new evidence concerning periods before the 1991 legislative change. Later legislation supplied the statutory mechanism for recovery.
The court also held that the Minister did not need to issue a second repayment demand after the Appeals Officer’s decision. The earlier June 1994 demand remained sufficient.
The appeal was allowed and judgment entered for the Minister for £43,088.25.