The Court of Appeal has dismissed Michael Grimes’s appeal against the refusal of additional relief he sought in judicial review proceedings that he had withdrawn. The court said those proceedings were at an end and no appeal lay in respect of them.
Grimes had pleaded guilty in 2018 to three of seven tax fraud counts under section 1078 of the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997. The Circuit Court imposed a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence, suspended for five years, subject to conditions. These included requirements relating to tax compliance and dealings with Revenue. The judgment says he was also automatically deemed disqualified under the Companies Act 2014 for five years from conviction.
Revenue asserted that Grimes breached the sentence conditions and said staff had told him he could not arrange tax registration for a new motor business in Granard. In January 2019, he sought leave to challenge the conditions by judicial review. The proceedings were later listed in the High Court alongside the DPP’s motion to dismiss them for want of prosecution.
The day before that hearing, Grimes applied for further relief, including details of alleged breaches, time to respond or remedy them, and legal aid. The High Court refused the application. Grimes then withdrew his application for leave to pursue judicial review after the judge told him that withdrawal would end the matter and could not be appealed.
The Court of Appeal said the separate application for further relief could not be maintained after the underlying proceedings ended, regardless of its merits. It also noted that the alleged breaches had been set out in a nine-page letter from a Garda sergeant, which Grimes had included in separate 2022 judicial review proceedings.
That separate case, brought in May 2022, challenges the lawfulness of a notice to re-enter the suspended sentence proceedings. The Court of Appeal said that issue should be dealt with by the High Court as the court of first instance. It stressed that the notice’s validity was not an issue in the withdrawn proceedings.
The appeal had been considered on the papers. The court rejected Grimes’s argument that legal aid granted for the criminal prosecution entitled him to aid for the judicial review. It said those proceedings were civil and that civil legal aid was a matter for the Legal Aid Board, not the High Court or the DPP. The court dismissed the appeal.