The High Court has refused leave to bring contempt proceedings against the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine after finding that the parties had no shared understanding that a court undertaking covered appointments from an external competition.
Mr Justice Hogan ruled that the undertaking was a nullity to the extent the applicants said it barred those appointments. The court found no breach of an enforceable undertaking on that issue. The judgment did not decide the merits of the applicants’ underlying judicial review challenge, which is to be determined later.
The applicants, Vincent Gormley and James Scott, are technical agricultural officers employed by the Department in Co Galway. They challenged their exclusion from an internal competition for Assistant Agricultural Inspector posts, arguing that their qualifications should have met the advertised requirements. They had also been rejected from an earlier open competition for seven such posts.
On 30 July 2013, counsel for the Minister gave an undertaking that the Minister would not, until 18 September, select or appoint people to the posts advertised in the internal competition “or otherwise”. During that period, three people were appointed from the external competition panel. The applicants said the undertaking covered all appointments to the posts; the Department understood it to apply only to appointments from the internal competition.
Justice Hogan said both interpretations were understandable in light of the wording and circumstances. The applicants had not challenged their exclusion from the external competition, and the external appointment process was already under way. Department officials understood that the undertaking did not extend to it and said the Department would not have given the undertaking on that broader basis.
Applying principles from the Supreme Court’s decision in *Mespil Ltd v Capaldi*, the judge concluded that there had been a fundamental misunderstanding about the undertaking’s scope. The parties had agreed that no candidates would be appointed from the internal competition, and that commitment was honoured. But there was no corresponding agreement about external appointments, so the undertaking could not support contempt proceedings over the three appointments.
The judge also refused leave to bring contempt proceedings against the Minister personally or in his corporate capacity. He noted that the current office-holder, Simon Coveney, had no personal involvement in the appointments or the decisions at issue. The judgment said committal should generally be reserved for the rarest cases and that a declaration of breach may often suffice.
Although neither side was blamed for the misunderstanding, the judge said the applicants were entitled to object to what happened. He indicated that this would be reflected to some degree in any costs order made later.