The High Court has sent a mother’s initial application for domiciliary care allowance back to the Department of Social Protection for fresh consideration, finding that the deciding officer’s reliance on a departmental medical assessor had displaced the officer’s statutory decision-making role.
The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice Barrett on 1 April 2014, concerned B., whose son has autism. B. applied for the allowance in March 2013. Her application included reports from her general practitioner and other professionals who had assessed her son and described his care needs.
A departmental medical assessor concluded that the medical evidence did not show a disability requiring substantial extra care. On 16 May 2013, a deciding officer refused the application. B. sought a statutory revision, but another deciding officer refused to revise the decision on 1 July 2013, after receiving a further medical assessor’s opinion.
B. brought judicial review to challenge how the decision was made, rather than the outcome of the eligibility assessment. She argued that deciding officers followed medical assessors’ opinions so consistently that they were not exercising their own statutory discretion. The Minister argued that B. should have pursued an appeal under the social welfare system. The court rejected that argument, saying there was no route within that system to challenge the decision-making process itself.
Departmental information cited in the case said it would be “highly unusual” for a deciding officer to decide against a medical assessor on medical eligibility. An affidavit also stated that the initial officer had made 3,806 decisions and had not departed from the assessor’s opinion in any of them. The Department said officers made the final decision, could discuss an assessor’s opinion and could seek a second opinion.
The court held that, in the circumstances of B.’s initial application, the assessor’s opinion had in fact determined the outcome. It found that the officer had abdicated the statutory duty to decide the application, contrary to section 300 of the Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005, and that the process was vitiated.
The court ordered fresh consideration of the initial application. It did not decide whether B.’s son met the eligibility criteria, nor did it set aside the separate refusal of the statutory revision. The judgment said the medical reports about the child’s needs provided background context but were not relied on in deciding the judicial review.