The High Court has found that the Garda Commissioner acted unlawfully by invoking a second process that could dismiss a garda for conduct already dealt with through disciplinary proceedings. The court held that, in these circumstances, the process breached the applicant’s right to constitutional justice.
The case concerned conduct at Lismore Garda Station on 15 March 2017. A member of the public had complained, and the garda admitted the disciplinary allegations and the facts set out in the investigation report. The Board of Inquiry recommended that he be required to resign or retire instead of being dismissed for one breach, and that his pay be reduced for another. The Commissioner accepted those recommendations in October 2018.
On appeal, an independent Appeal Board found the resignation or retirement sanction disproportionate. In January 2020 it substituted a four-week pay reduction for the first breach, leaving the two-week reduction for the second breach in place. The garda remained in the force.
The Commissioner then suspended him while considering dismissal under section 14 of the Garda Síochána Act 2005. In a letter dated 31 March 2020, the Commissioner set out a preliminary opinion that the garda’s continued membership would undermine public confidence and invited him to make representations. No final section 14 decision had been made when the judicial review was heard.
The Commissioner argued that the challenge was premature and that section 14 could be used independently of the disciplinary regulations. The court accepted that section 14 could, in principle, be invoked even after a disciplinary process. But it held that the challenge was not premature: the garda was already exposed to a renewed risk of dismissal for the same conduct, despite the completed appeal process and without any change in the underlying circumstances.
Justice Ferriter said the Commissioner had pursued the garda’s removal in the first process, but an independent appeal board had found that sanction disproportionate and imposed a financial penalty. Starting another process aimed at removal over the same conduct, the court held, unfairly put the garda at risk of a second serious sanction and fundamentally offended constitutional justice. The judge distinguished this from a criminal double-jeopardy ruling: the relevant basis was the right to constitutional justice in a public-law process.
The court also concluded that the suspension connected to the section 14 process had no valid basis once that process was found unlawful. It did not make a final order at the end of the judgment. The judge said he would hear the parties on the appropriate order and gave a provisional view that certiorari should quash the decision to invoke section 14. The source does not record the order made after that hearing.