The High Court has dismissed an application by Sport Ireland and Sport Ireland (Operations) DAC to have a personal injury claim dismissed as statute barred. The court did not decide whether the alleged accident occurred or whether the defendants were liable. It directed the parties to make submissions on costs within 14 days.
Priscilla Du Plooy alleges that she injured her coccyx on 8 March 2013 while descending a waterslide at the National Aquatic Centre in Blanchardstown. She says she was struck by a “dangerous item or protrusion”. Those allegations have not been determined.
Du Plooy’s first application to the Personal Injuries Assessment Board (PIAB) was deemed complete on 6 March 2015, shortly before the limitation period was due to expire. PIAB issued an authorisation in June 2016, after deciding it was not appropriate to assess the claim. Proceedings were then brought against “National Aquatic Centre”, which the judgment says was not a corporate entity.
The plaintiff’s solicitors later sought amended authorisations naming other bodies. The National Sports Campus Development Authority had been dissolved in 2015, and Sport Ireland took on its liabilities under the Sport Ireland Act 2015. A further authorisation issued in February 2019 named Sport Ireland and NSCDA (Operations) DAC. After that company changed its name to Sport Ireland (Operations) DAC, PIAB issued another authorisation on 11 April 2019. Proceedings against the current defendants were issued on 13 May 2019.
The defendants argued that those proceedings came more than six years after the alleged accident and were statute barred. The issue before the High Court was whether PIAB’s later authorisations could extend the period during which limitation time was disapplied.
Justice Meenan held that the relevant period began with the original PIAB application on 6 March 2015 and ended six months after the 11 April 2019 authorisation. He relied on section 46(3) of the Personal Injuries Assessment Board Act 2003 and the Supreme Court’s decision in *Renehan v. T & S Taverns Limited*. The court noted that PIAB had treated the amended authorisations as covering persons omitted through genuine oversight or ignorance of the relevant facts. If the defendants considered PIAB had no legal basis to issue them, the appropriate course was to challenge PIAB directly; they had not done so.
The court therefore found the proceedings were not statute barred and dismissed the defendants’ application. The underlying injury claim will proceed; no finding was made on its merits.