The High Court quashed a decision by the Minister for Justice to reduce a prison officer’s rank, ruling that the Minister had decided on the penalty before hearing from him. The court also quashed the officer’s continuing suspension from 8 March 2004.
In a judgment delivered on 15 June 2007, Mr Justice McGovern found that the Minister’s letter told the officer the Minister “has decided” to reduce him to Assistant Chief Officer, while also offering a right of appeal. That wording conveyed that the outcome had already been settled, the judge said, and the appeal risked being a fiction.
The officer, Ernest Price, was a Chief Prison Officer assigned to Mountjoy Gaol. He had pleaded guilty to three disciplinary offences arising from copying discs and asking for a telephone line to be fitted to a prison store room. The Governor recommended a reprimand and a one-increment pay reduction for 12 months. The Minister’s letter proposed replacing that penalty with a reduction in rank.
The court held that the 1996 Prison Disciplinary Code allowed the Minister to vary the Governor’s penalty, but required the officer to be notified and given the prescribed appeal right. Because the Minister had stated that he had decided on the more serious penalty before hearing the officer’s reasons against it, the process breached fair procedures and natural justice and was outside the Minister’s powers under the Rules. The judge said it would not be proper for the Minister to hear an appeal against a decision he had already made.
The respondents argued that the officer’s failure to use the appeal process prevented judicial review. The judge held that this failure was not fatal because the officer had been told the Minister had already decided to reduce his rank. He also rejected the officer’s argument that a memorandum of understanding barred the Minister from increasing the penalty, citing a Supreme Court ruling that the memorandum could not affect the statutory Rules.
The officer’s suspension without pay began on 3 October 2003. The court ruled that the continuing suspension advised in the 8 March 2004 letter was unlawful and quashed it from that date. It made no order concerning the Governor’s original disciplinary sanction, which the officer had not effectively challenged.