The High Court has ruled that the Commissioner of Valuation had no sound legal basis to reopen a decision excluding a Sandymount property from the valuation list. The court also found that the statutory conditions for a subsequent valuation amendment were not met.
The judicial review was brought by Ann Keane and Pat Halpin, who live with their family at the property, 53/55 Park Avenue, Sandymount, Dublin 4. A guesthouse operating there through a company had closed after a receiver was appointed in 2012. The first applicant later ran a bed and breakfast at the premises, which was not registered as a guesthouse. The applicants said they did not control third-party website listings describing it as a guesthouse.
In November 2017, the applicants sought revision of the property’s valuation, arguing it was domestic and should not be liable for rates. On 11 March 2019, a revision manager excluded it from the valuation list, describing it as a domestic home partly used as a B&B and mainly used as a family home. No appeal was lodged against that decision.
In May 2019, the Commissioner’s office initiated a further process to list the property for revision, describing its earlier removal as a clerical error. The Commissioner then directed a revision manager under section 29A of the Valuation Act 2001 to amend the valuation. The applicants challenged both steps by judicial review.
Mr Justice Meenan said the original exclusion was based on the view that the premises was a domestic home, not on its deregistration as a guesthouse. He rejected reliance on the applicants’ website listings, noting that they had said they did not control the content and that the property had already been inspected and assessed. He concluded there was no clerical error and no sound legal basis for the Commissioner’s “commissioner’s listing” under section 28(2).
The court held that, because the section 28 process lacked a lawful basis, the conditions precedent for using section 29A were not satisfied. It also found there were no exceptional circumstances to justify that power, since the original removal was not incorrect.
The judge said the applicants were entitled to the reliefs they sought. He did not specify the consequential orders in this judgment; the parties were given 14 days to file written submissions on those orders. The judgment therefore records the court’s conclusion on entitlement to relief, with the form of the orders left for a further step.