The Court of Appeal has ruled that an application by Secular Schools Ireland Ltd. to become patron of a new primary school in Carrigtwohill was not invalid, after the Department of Education wrongly excluded it from consideration.
In a judgment delivered on 2 March 2017, the court allowed the company’s appeal against a 2015 High Court decision that had refused judicial review relief. It granted a declaration that the application, submitted on 20 March 2015, was not invalid.
The court did not set aside the patronage appointment already made for the school. Secular Schools had told the court it was not seeking to remove the successful patron, so the declaration had little practical effect on events that had already occurred. The court said the case nevertheless raised an important issue of public administration.
The Department had treated the application as invalid because it said the company had confirmed only one of seven commitments listed in its guidelines for prospective patrons. Those commitments included accepting special education facilities, operating within Department rules and being willing to enter a standard lease or provide a school site. The application was therefore not assessed on its merits.
The Court of Appeal found that the guidelines did not clearly require applicants to state those commitments in their applications. They listed the commitments as requirements prospective patrons would have to satisfy, but separately described the criteria used to decide patronage. The application process called for written applications addressing the criteria; it did not say that an express declaration accepting every requirement had to be included or that its absence would invalidate an application.
The court considered the Department’s reliance on previous assessment reports, which showed applicants’ acceptance of the requirements. But it found those reports did not clearly establish that commitments had to appear in the application itself, particularly as the Department had supplied no application form. The court concluded that applicants had not been clearly told that failing to make express declarations would be fatal.
The judgment described the Department’s approach as a serious administrative error and said the company had suffered an injustice by being excluded from the evaluation process. The court did not decide broader constitutional or international-law arguments raised by the company, nor whether the Department should have asked it to clarify its commitments.