The High Court has dismissed a judicial review brought by J. McE against the Residential Institutions Redress Board over its refusal to accept a late application for redress.
Mr Justice Moriarty delivered judgment on 20 June 2014. The court’s role was to review the legality of the Board’s decision, not to decide the redress application itself or substitute its own view of whether extra time should be granted. The court found no error warranting the decision being sent back to the Board.
The applicant’s solicitors submitted his redress application on 16 September 2011, more than five and a half years after the statutory deadline of 15 December 2005. The application said he had lived as a child at St. Kieran’s Industrial School for Junior Boys and had been abused there within the meaning of the Residential Institutions Redress Act 2002. The Board held an oral hearing in November 2012 and refused an extension in a written determination dated 17 January 2013.
At that hearing, the applicant said he could not read or write and had experienced long-standing problems with alcohol. He said his new partner alerted him to a solicitors’ advertisement in September 2011. He also confirmed that he had watched television news on most days during the relevant period, but said he had not noticed publicity about the Board and associated redress scheme. The Board accepted his evidence about illiteracy but concluded that publicity was available through television and that his alcohol difficulties had not prevented him from working or from learning of the Board.
The applicant argued in the High Court that the Board had unlawfully restricted its discretion by treating lack of knowledge as insufficient unless personal circumstances had prevented or inhibited a timely application. He also argued that the Board had treated his late application differently from a contemporaneous application by his nephew, who had lived at the same institution. The nephew’s application was granted, but the judgment records that privilege was not waived and says the comparison was not a substantive argument.
The judge rejected the challenge to the Board’s interpretation of “exceptional circumstances”. He said all relevant circumstances, including access to publicity, education, health, work history and the delay, could properly be considered together. The court was not persuaded that the Board had misconstrued the test, lacked sufficient material, or acted with bias or another reviewable flaw.
The judicial review was dismissed. The judgment did not grant an extension or determine the underlying redress claim; the Board’s refusal remained in place.