The Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal by John O’Brien over his exclusion from a compensation scheme for prisoners who had to slop out while detained in Cork Prison.
In a judgment delivered on 30 April 2026, Ms Justice Hyland upheld a High Court ruling that O’Brien was not entitled to an offer under the State settlement scheme because his claim was statute-barred.
O’Brien was detained in Cork Prison during periods between March 2013 and September 2014. He shared a cell with at least one other prisoner without in-cell sanitation and was required to use a bucket which was emptied daily.
The settlement scheme followed the Supreme Court’s 2019 decision in Simpson v Governor of Mountjoy Prison, which confirmed that such conditions could breach constitutional rights and awarded damages. The scheme offered fixed compensation depending on prison conditions, with maximum payments ranging from €2,500 to €7,500, but only where at least part of the claim remained within the applicable limitation period.
O’Brien first sought compensation under the scheme in November 2020. The State Claims Agency responded that his last period under the relevant prison conditions had ended in September 2014 and that his claim was outside the six-year limitation period.
He argued that no effective remedy had existed before the Supreme Court’s Simpson ruling and that the scheme’s reliance on limitation periods wrongly denied him redress for an admitted breach of constitutional rights.
The Court of Appeal rejected those arguments. It held that the scheme itself did not impose a new or retrospective time limit; it simply applied the existing Statute of Limitations. The court also said O’Brien could have issued proceedings after the 2017 High Court decision in Simpson, when he was still within time, but had not explained why he failed to do so.
His arguments under the Constitution and European Convention on Human Rights also failed because he had never challenged the validity of the statutory limitation rule itself.
The appeal was dismissed in full. The respondents were presumptively entitled to their costs, subject to further written submissions if O’Brien wished to contest that order.