The Court of Appeal has ruled that two applicants seeking compensation for criminal injuries must be given information sufficient to understand how the Criminal Injuries Compensation Tribunal has applied a rule allowing it to reduce or refuse awards based on a victim’s conduct, character or way of life.
The court found that the inability to access such information breached the applicants’ constitutional right to fair procedures and/or failed to ensure effective protection of their EU law right to compensation. It did not order the release of all past decisions. The precise form of relief remains to be decided after further submissions, as do the costs of the appeal.
The appeals were brought by Paul Doyle and Gary Kelly, whose compensation claims were still at an early stage and had not been decided by the Tribunal. The court said the cases were separate and unconnected. Doyle was injured in an assault at his Dublin residence in April 2014. Kelly applied for compensation for injuries from an assault in March 2016. Both had criminal records, which the Tribunal could consider under paragraph 14 of its scheme.
The judgment followed a 2020 ruling by the EU Court of Justice that the relevant EU directive gives victims of violent intentional crime a right to fair and appropriate compensation, including when the crime occurred in the victim’s own country. The Court of Appeal said the Irish scheme must now be understood as a means of meeting that EU obligation.
The court rejected the argument that EU law required the Tribunal to provide legal aid or pay a successful claimant’s legal costs. It said the scheme was designed to be simple and non-adversarial, with Tribunal staff able to assist applicants and arrange necessary reports. The court also noted that the applicants had provided limited evidence of their financial circumstances.
The court considered the challenge to the scheme’s exclusion of pain and suffering compensation for injuries sustained after 1 April 1986 premature because neither claim had been decided. It likewise dismissed the challenge to paragraph 14 insofar as the applicants argued it could never lawfully be considered. The court said the directive allows member states to consider conduct, character or way of life, while any challenge to how the Tribunal applies the rule in an individual case must await a Tribunal decision.
The Court of Appeal therefore allowed the appeals only on access to information about past applications of paragraph 14. It said that some consistency in applying the rule was necessary to avoid unfair or arbitrary outcomes, but left the scope and form of the required information open for further argument.