The High Court has dismissed Patrick Kelly’s application to set aside a 2008 ruling that protected the confidentiality of University College Dublin course applications. Mr Justice William M. McKechnie found no evidence that Suzanne Quin had committed perjury and said he was satisfied she had acted in good faith.
The application concerned a ruling delivered on 31 July 2008, which refused Mr Kelly access to application documents submitted by people offered places on UCD’s Masters in Social Science (Social Worker) Mode A course for 2002–2004. The court had accepted that the documents contained sensitive personal information and that applicants could remain identifiable even if their names were removed.
The underlying dispute began after UCD told Mr Kelly on 15 March 2002 that he had not received a first-round offer. He challenged the decision on grounds of gender discrimination. The Equality Tribunal dismissed his complaint in November 2006, and an appeal was pending in the Circuit Court at the time of this judgment.
Mr Kelly argued that Quin, head of UCD’s School of Applied Social Science, had misled the court in an affidavit about sensitive experiences described in applicants’ personal statements. He relied on her cross-examination, in which she acknowledged she had probably not read all the 2002 applications in detail and could not confirm that the examples she cited came from those documents. He said the earlier ruling should therefore be set aside for fraud.
The judge said a ruling could be set aside where fraudulent testimony was proved on the balance of probabilities, the successful party knew of or instigated it, and the testimony was material to the decision. He rejected the argument that any finding of perjury would automatically invalidate the whole ruling.
After considering the affidavit, cross-examination and Mr Kelly’s submissions, the judge found no evidence of perjury. He said the identified contradictions did not amount to perjury and found Quin’s evidence “beyond reproach in this regard”. As he made no finding of perjury, he said it was unnecessary to decide whether she was UCD’s agent or whether the university knew of the circumstances of her evidence.
Quin had also asked the court to restrain Mr Kelly from repeating the accusations. The judge made no order on that request, saying no properly constituted motion was before him. He dismissed Mr Kelly’s application to set aside the 2008 ruling.