The High Court has refused Deirdre Morgan leave to issue a motion seeking permission to disclose information under the Employment Equality Act, ruling that the case had already been dismissed and the question of further evidence now belonged to the appellate courts.
Ms Justice Siobhán Phelan delivered the ruling on 1 March 2023. Ms Morgan had sought leave under an Isaac Wunder order made in earlier proceedings. That order required her to obtain a High Court judge’s permission before bringing further proceedings relating to her employment with Kildare and Wicklow Education and Training Board, including matters concerning her contract and pension entitlements.
The underlying case was an appeal on a point of law from a Labour Court decision dated 1 April 2020. In March 2022, the High Court dismissed that appeal after finding that Ms Morgan had not identified an error of law. The court later made final orders dismissing the proceedings. Those orders were under appeal when Justice Phelan considered this application.
Ms Morgan said she needed permission to disclose information in order to respond to assertions made by legal teams for the Board and the Minister for Education and Skills in several related cases. The ruling records that she had previously been invited to pursue a similar motion before Justice Ferriter in March 2022 but declined to do so. She had also brought a motion in the Court of Appeal seeking to adduce further evidence.
Justice Phelan found that the High Court was functus officio: it had completed its role in the dismissed proceedings and could not reopen them. She said any request to admit further evidence on appeal should be made to the appellate court under the applicable court rules.
The judge also interpreted section 97 as not generally preventing a party from putting relevant information before a court in proceedings under the relevant part of the Act. She said Ms Morgan had not explained how the document she identified could assist her. The document was a letter concerning a 2009 complaint to the Equality Tribunal; the ruling records that the complaint was determined in 2012 after the Equality Officer found no prima facie case of gender discrimination.
Separately, Justice Phelan concluded that the proposed motion had no reasonable prospect of success and was frivolous and vexatious in the circumstances. She refused leave to issue it. The ruling did not determine the pending appeals or the Court of Appeal motion for further evidence.