The High Court has refused most of a discovery application by a medical clinic and its director in judicial review proceedings against the Medical Council and others, while limiting disclosure to specified Council minutes.
The applicants are challenging decisions made during an investigation by the Council’s Preliminary Proceedings Committee (PPC), alleging unfair procedures and bias. The underlying matter followed a patient’s visit to the clinic in August 2021. A man described as Dr Anous carried out an examination; the judgment says he was not registered to practise medicine in Ireland. The Council later referred a matter concerning the clinic’s director to the PPC over the alleged engagement of Anous while unregistered.
The applicants sought records in three areas: the usual form of complaints, any consideration of overlapping membership between the Council and PPC, and statistics comparing complaints referred onward by the PPC. They argued that three PPC members had also sat on the Council when it decided to refer the complaint concerning the director.
Justice Mary Rose Gearty said the discovery application did not decide the underlying judicial review. She found that comparisons with how complaints were handled in other cases would not resolve whether the correspondence sent to the director gave fair notice in this case. The court would assess the complaint on the terms of that correspondence.
On committee overlap, the judge said the applicants already had evidence about membership, meeting attendance and complaint volumes that could be used to argue whether the overlap was workable or could be avoided. The Council had offered minutes covering five years. The judge concluded that wider searches through 13 years of records and staff communications were not necessary and would impose an extensive burden.
The court confined disclosure to Council minutes from its establishment in July 2008 through the end of 2009, from 2020, and from January to November 2021, insofar as they refer to consideration of overlap between Council and PPC membership.
The applicants also sought data to support an allegation of systemic bias. The judge noted that the case had not been referred to the Fitness to Practise Committee (FPC) and remained at the PPC’s investigative stage. The Council had offered to provide the proportions of Council-initiated complaints and complaints from other sources referred to the FPC. The judge considered that sufficient to meet the pleaded case if it included a systemic-bias claim. She also noted that under the Medical Practitioners Act 2007 the Council may direct that a matter be referred to the FPC, even if the PPC considers there is insufficient cause for further action.
The judgment records a provisional view that the application’s costs should follow the event and be awarded to the respondents. It does not state a final costs order; the parties were told to notify the Registrar by 4pm on 7 March if a hearing was required.