The Supreme Court has allowed a school board’s appeal over a High Court order that kept a student enrolled while he appealed his expulsion. It ruled that the order was, in substance, a mandatory interlocutory injunction and that the procedure used to grant it was not consistent with established legal principles.
The case concerned a minor, identified as MD, who was in his Junior Certificate year at a secondary school. The judgment says serious allegations of misconduct, including alleged bullying of a female student, were made against him. The school’s principal prepared a report in December 2022.
The board made a preliminary decision to expel the student in January 2023. After the statutory 20-school-day period, the board decided on 9 March to permanently exclude him. He appealed under section 29 of the Education Act 1998, but the appeal committee rejected the appeal on 8 June 2023.
The student’s judicial review challenge was directed at the school’s refusal to let him remain while that statutory appeal was pending, rather than at the expulsion decision itself. The Supreme Court said the expulsion decision therefore remained valid. In practical terms, the interim order required the school to readmit a student who had already been validly expelled.
A High Court judge had granted leave to seek judicial review and made an interim order in February 2023. Another High Court judge later refused the school’s application to set that order aside. The school also made a further application concerning allegations of later misconduct; that application was refused.
Justice Gerard Hogan said an interim order made at the leave stage should have lasted only briefly, with the student then required to apply on notice for an interlocutory injunction and carry the burden of proof. For a mandatory injunction, the student would have needed to show a strongly arguable case. The grant of leave to seek judicial review did not itself establish that threshold.
The Supreme Court also found there had been no proper analysis of the balance of convenience. The appeal was allowed on those procedural and injunction grounds. The Court did not decide the wider question of whether a court can grant an injunction in aid of a statutory appeal where the legislation provides no stay procedure. It expressed no view on that issue.