The High Court has refused D.B. permission to pursue a judicial review challenge to Legal Aid Board decisions connected with the withdrawal of legal aid for his family law proceedings.
Mr Justice Garrett Simons delivered judgment on May 21, 2026. He found that the proceedings, commenced on July 16, 2025, were well outside the three-month time limit for judicial review and that no adequate explanation for the delay had been provided.
D.B. had received a legal aid certificate in November 2020 for proceedings against his spouse. In January 2024, the Legal Aid Board notified him that it intended to terminate the certificate on the stated ground that he was behaving unreasonably in conducting the proceedings. The notice listed allegations concerning his dealings with his solicitor, counsel and a court-appointed medical assessor.
D.B. was given one month to explain why termination should not proceed but did not use that process. The Board terminated the certificate on April 23, 2024. Its notice explained that he could seek an internal review or appeal within one month, but the judgment records that he used neither procedure.
He instead pursued a complaint about the legal services he had received. That complaint was rejected in September 2024 and the decision was upheld on review on December 12, 2024.
The High Court identified the termination decision and the December review decision as the two matters potentially capable of judicial review. Even using the later decision, however, the July 2025 proceedings were about seven months late.
Mr Justice Simons said a person seeking extra time must provide reasons which objectively explain the delay and justify an extension up to the date proceedings were commenced. D.B. had not done so and had known of the relevant decisions when they were made.
The judge also stressed that judicial review of the Legal Aid Board could not be used to reopen the merits of the underlying family law case. D.B. had a separate right to appeal the Circuit Court family law orders to the High Court but had not exercised it.
Leave for judicial review was therefore refused. The judge provisionally proposed that each side should bear its own costs.