The High Court has granted Paul Coffey and Tony Collopy leave to pursue a judicial review challenge to the lawfulness of a compensation scheme for prisoners required to “slop out” in Limerick Prison. The ruling does not decide whether the scheme is unlawful or whether either applicant is entitled to damages.
Both men had been held in single-person cells without in-cell sanitation after the Supreme Court’s 2019 decision in *Simpson*, which found that slopping out in that case breached constitutional personal rights. Cell sanitation became available to all prisoners in Limerick Prison before the end of 2022, so the applicants’ original requests for injunctive relief had become moot.
The scheme offers compensation at a stated rate of €76 a week, capped at €2,500, for people required to slop out while not sharing a cell. Collopy received an open offer of €2,500 plus €1,000 in legal costs in June 2022, conditional on signing a settlement and payment authority form. He did not accept it. Coffey’s solicitor wrote seeking compensation in June 2022; Coffey made a formal scheme application on 1 February 2024, the date the leave applications were heard.
The applicants argued, among other things, that the scheme failed to provide for enhanced damages, treated different cases alike and unlawfully constrained the State Claims Agency’s discretion. Justice Siobhán Phelan found that arguments on those points did not meet the leave-stage threshold. She said the scheme is a non-compulsory open offer and that the applicants could pursue civil claims based on their individual circumstances.
The judge did find it arguable that constitutional-rights claims of this kind might fall outside the statutory definition of claims that can be delegated to the State Claims Agency under the National Treasury Management Agency (Amendment) Act 2000. She also found an arguable basis for the applicants’ standing to challenge the scheme, despite their applications under it, and for linking their damages claims to the judicial review at this stage.
Leave was granted for specified reliefs, including a challenge to the scheme, on the grounds set out in the amended statements of grounds. The judge also granted leave to seek an extension of time. She refused Coffey leave on a distinct argument that the scheme fettered the Agency’s discretion. The costs of the leave applications were reserved to the substantive hearing.