The High Court has directed a proportionate increase in the legal costs allowed for a Supreme Court appeal in a child’s nationality case, finding that the Taxing Master did not account for a major expansion of the arguments during the appeal hearing. The court upheld the costs allowances for the High Court proceedings and rejected a challenge to costs for work before the decision under review.
The case concerned a child born in Ireland to Nigerian parents. The Minister for Justice refused to issue a Certificate of Irish Nationality after calculating that the child’s father had 1,092 days of reckonable residence in the State, three days short of the 1,095-day requirement. The child’s judicial review succeeded in the High Court in 2010, and the Supreme Court dismissed the Minister’s appeal in 2012, ordering the Minister to pay the child’s appeal costs when ascertained and taxed.
The current proceedings reviewed the Taxing Master’s 2014 decision on disputed costs. The child challenged reductions to senior and junior counsel’s brief fees for both courts and to the solicitor’s instruction fee. The total instruction fee claimed was €107,500; €23,600 was allowed on taxation. The High Court explained that it could intervene only where an error in an allowance or disallowance made the decision unjust.
The judge accepted that the case raised a novel issue with wider public importance, and that the Supreme Court appeal became more complex when the Minister advanced substantially expanded oral arguments. Those arguments had to be addressed promptly by the child’s legal team. The judge found that the Taxing Master had not meaningfully accounted for the added work and expertise required, and that the failure to allow an increase caused a clear, undoubted and manifest injustice.
The court therefore ordered a reasonable, proportionate increase to the solicitor’s instruction fee and senior and junior counsel’s brief fees for the Supreme Court appeal. It did not set the revised amounts: the judgment said counsel would be heard on the form of the order.
The court upheld the Taxing Master’s allowances for the High Court proceedings, finding no error that made them unjust. It also upheld the decision to disallow a €15,000 claim for pre-proceedings work. The Taxing Master had allowed €4,250 for taking instructions and the initial leave application; the judge found that allowance reasonable and the earlier administrative correspondence distinct from work recoverable as costs of the judicial review.