The High Court has ruled that the Defence Minister acted unfairly and legally unreasonably by applying a change in the interpretation of academic requirements to an army cadet applicant without reasonable notice. The court found the change breached his legitimate expectation that the requirements would not be altered in a fundamental way without clear warning.
The applicant had applied in April 2018 for a place at the military college’s cadet school. He had sat the Leaving Certificate in 2017 and repeated it in 2018. He relied on his 2017 mathematics result after dropping mathematics from his 2018 studies to focus on other subjects. The Defence Forces told him in August 2018 that he did not meet the educational requirements because he had not obtained all required grades in one sitting.
He sought judicial review of the decision to reject his application. His case was that information on the Defence Forces website and guidance at an open day had led him to understand that required subject grades could be combined across examination sittings. He said he relied on that understanding when choosing which subjects to study. The respondents disputed that account’s legal effect, argued that the 2018 terms required qualifications in a single sitting, and said the application was out of time.
The judgment describes conflicting material about how the requirements operated. The 2018 terms and conditions included a notice requiring candidates to meet the minimum educational qualifications in one sitting, while earlier terms and website material did not consistently express that requirement. An officer responsible for recruitment and competitions said the section had previously understood that certain subject-specific grades could be carried forward. The court considered the understanding and practice of the Defence Forces staff responsible for recruitment and public information relevant.
The judge did not decide that the Minister lacked authority to change entry requirements. Instead, he found that, on these facts, the requirements’ application had changed on 1 April 2018, the day the competition opened, without reasonable and clear prior notice. He also rejected the respondents’ time-limit objection, finding that the applicant challenged the application of the requirements to him rather than the terms themselves. The court said there were ample grounds to extend time even if the limitation applied.
The court held that the applicant was entitled to succeed in his judicial review application. The judgment does not set out a final quashing order or other precise remedy: the judge said he would discuss the wording of the order with the parties.