The High Court ruled that the functions of Adult Education Officers (AEOs) were not wholly or mainly administrative or executive in nature under the relevant 1974 statutory instrument. The court did not make a final order in the judgment; it said it would hear the parties about what order was appropriate.
Mary Farrell and Tom Costello brought judicial review proceedings against the Minister for Education and Science, the County Longford Vocational Education Committee and the County Roscommon Vocational Education Committee. The judgment identifies the central issue as whether paragraph 1 of the schedule to Statutory Instrument No. 137 of 1974 applied to AEOs because their duties were wholly or mainly administrative, executive or clerical.
The court said the parties agreed that clerical work was not in issue. The dispute concerned the meaning of “administrative” and “executive” in the statutory schedule, applied to the functions described for AEOs in Circular 42/79 and its appendix. The judge accepted the respondents’ analysis of the ordinary meanings of those terms, while stressing that their meaning had to be assessed in the context of the whole provision and the duties at issue.
Justice Feeney treated the functions listed in the circular’s appendix as the duties AEOs were bound to perform for the purpose of the statutory instrument. He noted that those functions included administrative and executive tasks, but found they were not the essence or main character of the work. The underlying nature of the role was educational, with an educational component present in each listed function and predominant in some.
The court therefore concluded that the AEO functions were neither wholly nor mainly administrative or executive. It found that those categories could not be treated as the whole or main essence of the duties when the functions were considered together.
The judgment was delivered on 28 February 2007. It records the court’s substantive finding but ends by reserving the question of the appropriate order for a further hearing.