The Court of Appeal has refused an application by three appellants to reopen or correct its judgment dismissing an appeal over the 2012 direction for the sale of Irish Life to the Minister for Finance.
In a ruling delivered electronically on 13 December 2022, the court said Piotr Skoczylas, Tibor Neugebauer and John Paul McGann had not met the very high threshold for reviewing a judgment. It considered their application on the papers and rejected their request for legal submissions or an oral hearing at this preliminary stage.
The judgment under challenge, delivered on 8 November 2022, affirmed the High Court’s decision that the appellants lacked standing under section 11(1) of the Credit Institutions (Stabilisation) Act 2010 to seek to set aside the March Direction Order. That order directed Irish Life & Permanent to sell its life assurance business, Irish Life, to the Minister for €1.3 million, with completion due by 30 June 2012. Because it found the appellants lacked standing, the Court of Appeal said it had not considered it necessary or appropriate to determine the substantive arguments. Costs had not yet been addressed, and no order had been drawn or perfected.
The three applicants sought to rescind or vary the judgment, correct what they described as decisive errors, or, alternatively, stay the proceedings pending related constitutional cases. The court’s December ruling addressed only the review and correction requests. It said the stay request would be dealt with later.
The applicants argued, among other things, that the standing decision left the direction order without an effective challenge, that the appeal had been delayed, that the Attorney General’s representation of the notice party compromised fairness, and that the court had erred over whether shareholders in Irish Life & Permanent Holdings had a beneficial interest in Irish Life. The court rejected these grounds as insufficient for review, finding that they largely sought to revisit arguments already made and decided in the appeal. It also said the delay and the representation objection did not establish exceptional circumstances or a fundamental denial of justice.
The ruling emphasised that review is an exceptional jurisdiction concerned with fundamental issues of constitutional justice, not a further appeal on the merits. The court refused the application to vary, set aside or rescind the judgment, or to correct it. The separate stay request and costs remained outstanding in this ruling.