The Court of Appeal has dismissed two appeals by former teacher Deirdre Morgan, upholding High Court decisions that refused her leave to bring judicial review proceedings concerning her removal from office and the refusal of an injury gratuity.
In the first case, Morgan sought an opportunity to respond to a Kildare and Wicklow Education and Training Board submission made during an inquiry into her fitness to hold office. The Minister for Education decided on 15 June 2015 to remove her from office, and the decision was communicated on 23 June. The inquiry report referred to the board’s January 2015 submission.
Morgan said she did not receive a copy until August 2020 and argued that she should have had a fair chance to reply. The Minister’s representative said the submission had been sent to her in June 2017 under freedom of information legislation; Morgan disputed receiving that email. The Court of Appeal said that dispute did not affect the outcome: the submission’s existence was signalled in the inquiry report sent to her in 2015. It held that the judicial review application was, in substance, a challenge to the 2015 dismissal decision, for which the time limit had expired on 23 September 2015. The court dismissed the appeal.
The second appeal concerned a Ministerial determination affirming the board’s refusal of Morgan’s application for an injury gratuity under the Education and Training Board Teachers Superannuation Scheme 2015. The determination, communicated in November 2020, was expressly stated not to be binding. The scheme provides for a discretionary benefit where an injury is sustained in the actual discharge of a member’s duties, without the member’s default, and is attributable solely to the nature of those duties.
Morgan said her injury occurred during a hearing at the Equality Tribunal in Dublin on 7 February 2012. She argued that the decision-making process was unfair because she had not been given a chance to answer information relied on in the determination. The Court of Appeal held that, even if that procedural complaint had a basis, the circumstances she described could not meet the scheme’s requirement that the injury occur in the course of her teaching duties. It therefore found no arguable case at the leave stage. The court also agreed that the gratuity issue had been determined in other proceedings and that unrelated declaratory claims amounted to an abuse of process.
Both appeals were dismissed. The court did not conduct a full judicial review hearing in either case; it upheld the refusals of leave to bring those proceedings.