The High Court granted Ryanair leave to bring a judicial review challenge to the Government’s coronavirus travel advice, but dismissed the substantive application in its entirety. Mr Justice Garrett Simons delivered the judgment on 2 October 2020 after a three-day hearing.
Ryanair argued that Government statements advising against non-essential overseas travel and asking people arriving in Ireland to restrict their movements for 14 days amounted in practice to travel restrictions. It said measures with that effect required legislation. In the alternative, the airline argued that health legislation had displaced the Government’s executive power to issue public health advice. It also raised claims under EU law.
The judge considered the advice as it stood in the first week of September 2020. By then, the wording had changed from saying authorities “require” people arriving from outside the green-list countries to restrict their movements to saying they “advise” them to do so. Simons found that, read in context, the guidance did not give a person the impression that the 14-day restriction was legally enforceable. He said there was no legal requirement to follow it.
The judgment recognised that Government statements could be reviewable if they unequivocally represented that rights-restrictive measures were legally binding and backed by sanctions. But the court found that threshold was not met. A separate statutory requirement to complete a passenger locator form did not make the movement advice mandatory. The judge also said that a financial consequence for some jobseeker’s benefit recipients had a basis in legislation that Ryanair had not challenged.
Simons rejected the argument that the Health Act 1947 or Health Act 1970 had removed the Government’s executive power to provide travel and public health advice. He concluded that the legislation did not require such advice to be embodied in regulations or issued only by the Minister for Health.
The court also rejected the EU law arguments on their merits. It found no evidence that the advice interfered with Ryanair’s freedom of establishment or its right to provide services, and said the airline had not shown an effect on its workers’ free movement. The judgment did not assess the wisdom of the advice or the criteria for the green list.
The State respondents’ preliminary objections—justiciability, standing and mootness—were not made out. The court nevertheless dismissed the case after considering its merits. The judgment did not finally determine costs: it proposed an order requiring Ryanair to pay the State respondents’ costs, with no costs order for or against Aer Lingus, and invited submissions on any different order by 19 October 2020.