The Supreme Court dismissed Thomas Rowland’s appeal over An Post’s inquiry into his work as a sub-postmaster, finding that it had not been shown, when the case was heard in the High Court, that the process had irretrievably gone wrong.
Mr Justice Clarke delivered the judgment on 27 March 2017, with O’Donnell and MacMenamin JJ also listed on the court. The appeal concerned Mr Rowland’s attempt to stop An Post’s process while it was still under way. The Court held that an injunction or other relief was not warranted at that stage.
Mr Rowland had been sub-postmaster in Bofeenaun, County Mayo, since 1974. An Post raised concerns following a review of transactions between October 2005 and September 2006, which affected the basis for his remuneration in the next three-year period. A letter in April 2007 queried whether activity had been artificially increased and said it was significantly out of line with comparable post offices. An Post later said the concerns raised whether it could continue to have confidence in him.
Mr Rowland challenged the procedures, including the failure at that stage to provide comparative data and his request to question those involved in formulating the concerns. He also objected to the proposed personnel conducting the process. The High Court dismissed his claim in 2011, treating the application as premature because the disciplinary hearing stage had not yet been reached.
The Supreme Court said courts should generally assess a disciplinary-like process as a whole, since procedural shortcomings may be corrected before it concludes. A court should intervene in an ongoing process only where it is clear that the process has gone irretrievably wrong, cannot be rectified, and an adverse result would be unsustainable. By the time of the High Court trial, An Post had indicated that it would provide relied-upon documents, potentially with confidential material redacted, and that questions could be put to witnesses if the hearing manager considered them necessary. The Court said it was not clear that the initial withholding of information or limits on questioning made an unsustainable outcome inevitable.
The Court stressed that its decision did not determine whether the completed process was fair overall. It held that the High Court’s finding of prematurity would not prevent a judge in separate proceedings from considering the same procedural points when reviewing the final decision. An Post later terminated Mr Rowland’s sub-postmaster position, and separate proceedings challenging that termination remained pending at the time of this judgment. The Supreme Court made no alternative order.