Dáil Éireann has not offered an apology to former Rehab chief executive Angela Kerins since the Supreme Court found the Public Accounts Committee acted unlawfully in its treatment of her during an appearance before it in 2014, the High Court has heard.
John Rogers SC, for Ms Kerins, made the statement on Thursday in response to Mr Justice Alexander Owens, who asked if the Dáil had apologised or taken action in response to the Supreme Court’s 2019 ruling.
“Nothing like that has emerged,” Mr Rogers said, adding that his side had approached the Dáil Committee on Procedure and Privileges (CPP) seeking a remedy.
Mr Justice Owens was interested in the answer, he said, as he recalled the Supreme Court’s reference to the lack of remedies available to Ms Kerins because the Dáil CPP had declined to intervene.
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In 2019, a seven-judge Supreme Court declared that the actions of the committee as a whole were such that they condoned the “significant departure” by at least three members from the terms of the committee’s invitation to Ms Kerins to appear before it.
The invitation and related correspondence permitted questioning about Ms Kerins’s salary and the operation by Rehab of three schemes funded by the State, the court found. Questioning on areas “well outside” this scope took up a significant part of the February 2014 hearing, including in relation to salaries of other Rehab officials and certain other commercial relationships Rehab had, it held.
The seven-hour hearing came amid a period of public controversy about her €240,000 salary at Rehab, a private charitable entity in receipt of extensive public funding.
Claim for damages
The High Court is hearing a discovery application brought by Ms Kerins in her claim for damages against Dáil Éireann, the Attorney General and Ireland. She is seeking all minutes of meetings of the committee, and/or individual members, whether in public or private session.
These records are sought in an attempt to understand, among other things, the extent of the committee’s knowledge of the limitations on its remit for the 2014 hearings. Disclosure of certain legal advice obtained by the committee is also sought as evidence of the committee’s “state of mind” prior to Ms Kerins appearing before it.
In her challenge, commenced in 2014, Ms Kerins alleges that she was subjected to questioning at the February hearing that amounted to a “witch hunt”. She claims this resulted in her being too unwell to attend a second related hearing in April and that the impact on her was so great that she afterwards attempted to take her own life.
The first module of her case examined whether the courts had jurisdiction to interfere with hearings before Oireachtas committees.
Mr Kerins appealed to the Supreme Court a ruling of a three-judge High Court that was strongly critical of the committee’s treatment of her but concluded the courts could not intervene due to the constitutional separation of powers.
The committee denied her claims and argued it was entitled to ask questions concerning State funding to Rehab.
Following its landmark ruling, the Supreme Court stressed that any dispute between the sides about further progress of the case should be decided by the High Court in the first instance, as its decision related to the first module of the action only.
