The High Court dismissed a judicial review challenge by two technical agricultural officers who were excluded from internal competitions for Assistant Agricultural Inspector posts. Mr Justice Hogan held on 19 June 2014 that the Department was entitled to decide their degrees in Rural Development did not meet the competition’s equivalence requirement.
The applicants, employed by the Department of Agriculture and Food in Co. Galway, argued that their qualifications should count as equivalent to an honours degree in Agricultural Science. They said their exclusion was unfair and arbitrary, particularly because two people with Rural Development degrees had previously been appointed as Assistant Agricultural Inspectors. They also argued that the Department gave inadequate reasons for rejecting their applications.
The Department accepted that two such degree holders had been appointed after a 2006 competition run by the Public Appointments Service. It said that competition was not run by the Department and that the degrees differed substantially from Agricultural Science. Evidence before the court described Agricultural Science as a four-year, full-time science degree covering core subjects including chemistry, physics and biology. Rural Development was described as a three-year, part-time course focused on rural affairs and without the same core science grounding.
The internal competition required an honours degree in Agricultural Science or a relevant qualification the Department accepted as equivalent. The judge found the Department had to assess the applicants’ degrees against that alternative qualification route. He concluded that the differences in course content and the scientific knowledge required for the inspector role gave a factual basis for the Department’s decision, which was not unreasonable.
On reasons, the judge accepted that the Department could have explained its assessment more fully. But the applicants had been told they did not meet the educational requirements. In a competitive selection process, the duty to give reasons was more limited, and the judge was not persuaded that the explanation was legally inadequate or that the applicants suffered real prejudice.
The court therefore found the Department was entitled to treat the qualifications as non-equivalent and dismissed the judicial review application. The judgment concerned the lawfulness of the exclusion decision; it did not appoint the applicants to the posts.