The High Court has ordered Wicklow County Council to provide John and Gayle Brady with documents across six categories in their judicial review proceedings over the Council’s inspection of their home and later Notice to Quit. The order concerns discovery for the case; it does not determine the underlying dispute or the Bradys’ allegations of bad faith and misfeasance in public office.
Mr Justice Max Barrett delivered the judgment on 13 November 2015. The Bradys rent a Council-owned house. The dispute followed an inspection in 2013 and a Council letter warning that an attic conversion posed a fire risk. The couple challenged the inspection and the Council’s subsequent actions. The Council denied wrongdoing.
The Council had declined to provide some requested records, arguing in part that the requests were irrelevant, unnecessary or a “fishing expedition”. The court considered whether the documents were relevant and necessary to resolve factual disputes raised in the judicial review evidence.
The court ordered disclosure of records concerning the decision to inspect the home, the inspection and the initial letter about the attic extension. It also ordered records concerning later inspections, the decision to issue the Notice to Quit dated 12 March 2014, and a demand for possession made at the home on 23 April 2014. Where relevant records in that category had already been provided with affidavit evidence, the Council need only identify them.
The Council must also provide records relating to four letters sent by the Bradys in April and May 2014, to which the judgment says there was no response. If the Council claims privilege over any of those records, it must list each document, give a general description and state the type of privilege claimed in its affidavit of discovery.
The order further covers plans or drawings of the house, attic-conversion consent letters issued to tenants between 2004 and June 2013, and documents consenting to attic conversions in the house next door. For the consent documents, the court limited disclosure to records issued within that period concerning houses on the estate where the Bradys live. The Council must also disclose the couple’s rental records, amid a dispute over whether they had paid adequate rent and whether an agreement governed payments.
The judgment describes the expected disclosure as a fairly discrete number of documents. It slightly modified one of the six categories. The source ends during the court’s concluding passage, so it does not provide the remainder of that passage or any further formal order.