The Court of Appeal has dismissed V.B.’s appeal against the High Court’s refusal to grant her leave to challenge five Circuit Court orders made in childcare proceedings. The appeal court held that her application for judicial review was brought outside the applicable time limit and that she had not applied for an extension.
The orders were made on 25 June 2021 by Judge Ó Donnabháin. They struck out V.B.’s appeals against 38 District Court orders, including decisions to adjourn applications concerning a care order for her youngest child, refusals to provide hearing recordings, the vacating of witness summonses and a refusal by a judge to recuse himself.
V.B. had sought judicial review to quash the Circuit Court orders and the underlying District Court orders. The Court of Appeal agreed with the High Court that the Circuit Court orders superseded the District Court decisions on appeal. It therefore confined its consideration to the five Circuit Court orders.
V.B. applied for leave on 13 December 2022, more than six months after the Circuit Court orders. The relevant rule set a three-month limit. She argued that she understood time ran from when the orders were perfected, which occurred on 21 September 2021, and said she had been busy with related litigation. The High Court found she knew the orders’ contents when they were made in court. The Court of Appeal noted that she had made no formal application to extend time, despite being alerted to the issue.
The appeal court said the absence of an extension application was fatal to the leave application. It also agreed that the explanations offered fell short of the threshold for extending time. The Court of Appeal found V.B. had identified no error in the High Court’s decision and dismissed the appeal.
The court did not determine the underlying childcare issues in this appeal. It noted that the District Court had separately rejected V.B.’s application to discharge the care order and her allegation that Tusla breached it; those decisions were not challenged in these proceedings. The youngest child reached adulthood in mid-2022. The Court of Appeal expressed reservations about whether the challenged interlocutory orders remained relevant after the substantive proceedings concluded, but the respondent had not cross-appealed the High Court’s rejection of its mootness argument, so the appeal court did not decide that issue.
The judgment was published in anonymised form. The court noted that publication of material likely to identify a child who has been the subject of specified childcare proceedings is an offence.