The Court of Appeal has allowed Ciaran Joyce to pursue a limited High Court challenge to a €125 clamping charge arising from his car being parked on Beach Road in Dublin 4.
Joyce’s vehicle was clamped on 13 July 2024 after being parked beside a continuous white line. He paid €125 after the vehicle had been loaded onto a tow truck and later appealed through Dublin Street Parking Services and then the National Transport Authority. The NTA rejected his appeal on 25 September 2024.
The High Court refused Joyce permission to bring judicial review proceedings in April 2025. It considered his complaints technical and treated the case as too minor to justify judicial review.
On 22 December 2025, the Court of Appeal majority partly reversed that decision.
Ms Justice Hyland held that Joyce had an arguable case on one issue: the immobilisation notice referred generally to section 35 of the Road Traffic Act 1994 but did not identify regulation 36(2)(d) of the Road Traffic (Traffic and Parking) Regulations 1997, which prohibits parking on certain roads beside a continuous white line.
The court did not decide that the notice was unlawful. It held only that the point met the low threshold required for permission to seek judicial review. The NTA will be entitled to argue at the substantive hearing that the omission was insignificant.
Five other proposed grounds were refused. These included complaints about appeal information on the notice, the recorded time of the contravention, legibility, access to photographic evidence and the speed with which the vehicle was towed.
The majority also held that the €125 amount did not automatically make the surviving issue too trivial for judicial review, noting that non-payment would have meant continued loss of use of the vehicle.
Joyce must now file an amended statement limited to the surviving ground. The case was remitted to the High Court for directions and a substantive hearing. Mr Justice Meenan dissented from the majority on the surviving ground.