By Maeve Rowan
The High Court has refused to grant permanent anonymity to a Trinity College Dublin pharmacy student challenging a decision to remove him from the postgraduate stage of his course.
The student, identified in the judgment as Student A, completed the undergraduate pharmacy degree and entered the postgraduate year leading towards an M.Pharm qualification. Trinity's University Council approved his withdrawal from that course in February 2024 following fitness-to-practise proceedings.
The university process included findings concerning what was described as an accumulation of code-of-conduct breaches. Student A admitted plagiarism in an examination, which had separately been classified at the university's most serious plagiarism level, but he disputes the fairness, legal basis and proportionality of the later fitness-to-practise process and outcome.
Those substantive arguments remain unresolved. The 6 February 2026 judgment deals only with whether his identity should be protected while the judicial review proceeds.
Student A argued that identification could damage his good name, employment prospects and mental health and expose him and his family to online abuse. Mr Justice Garrett Simons held that those concerns did not meet the demanding threshold required to depart from the constitutional principle that justice is administered publicly.
The judge said a litigant's reputation is generally protected through a public hearing and, if successful, public vindication by the court. He also rejected an analogy with disciplinary proceedings for registered pharmacists, noting that professional conduct hearings under the Pharmacy Act are ordinarily public rather than private.
The court found no medical evidence sufficient to justify restrictions under separate legislation dealing with identification of people with medical conditions.
Permanent anonymity was therefore refused. However, the existing restrictions were continued temporarily for 28 days after perfection of the order, and longer if an appeal was filed, so that any appeal on anonymity would not be rendered pointless by immediate publication of the student's identity.