The Court of Appeal is to consider whether the High Court or the lower Circuit Court should re-hear the case of a Traveller family awarded €22,000 for a discrimination claim over a decision made by a Cork hotel owned by fast food magnate Pat McDonagh not to accommodate them in 2020.
In 2022, the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) awarded Bridget O’Reilly and her partner, Philip O’Neill, €22,000 in compensation under the Equal Status Act for the refusal of Charleville Park Hotel, Limerick Road, Charleville, Co Cork to accommodate them. The hotel is owned by Atlantic Troy Ltd, which itself is owned by Supermac’s founder Mr McDonagh and his wife.
The WRC heard that the couple, of De Valera Park, Charleville, and their two sons were refused emergency homeless accommodation by the hotel under a rule that demands guests produce a credit card matching their identification, which the family could not produce.
They alleged they were discriminated against both as members of the Traveller Community and as recipients of a Housing Assistance Payment (Hap) when they were refused accommodation on September 28th, 2020.
“To deny emergency accommodation for three nights only, to a family who were both homeless and members of a vulnerable minority at the margins of society…fell below the threshold of decency that reasonable people expect of the hospitality sector,” the WRC adjudicator wrote in making the award.
In July 2022, however, the Circuit Court overturned the award with Judge James O’Donohoe saying he believed that Ms O’Reilly and Mr O’Neill were “two highly respectable individuals” but they had brought their case on an “ill-based perception” that they were being discriminated against.
That Circuit Court ruling was subsequently quashed by Judicial Review at the High Court in September 2023.
Mr Justice Barry O’Donnell said the Circuit Court hearing “was unfair as a result of excessive intervention” by the Circuit Judge.
Mr Justice O’Donnell said the Circuit judge also used the word “itinerant” in reference to the family during the appeal hearing and described it as “inappropriate and derogatory”.
The High Court concluded “the proceedings in the Circuit Court were rendered unfair by the excessive interventions of the learned Judge.”
The hotel then appealed against the High Court hearing the latest case and argued that there was an “adequate alternative remedy” by way of a statutory appeal at the lower Circuit Court under a different judge.
At the Court of Appeal on Thursday, Cathy Smith SC, for Atlantic Troy, said not only was there an adequate alternative remedy available in going to the Circuit Court for a hearing before a different judge, Ms O’Reilly’s legal team had already sought this route but had been out of time in that application.
Ms Smith said that Ms O’Reilly’s legal team then abandoned that application, opting instead to have the case heard in the higher court.
It is submitted on behalf of the hotel that Mr Justice O’Donnell erred “in law and in fact” in finding that the respondent was entitled to maintain judicial review proceedings without exhausting other options.
Helen Callanan SC, for Ms O’Reilly, said she saw no reason why the case should now not go to the High Court by way of judicial review.
In Ms Callanan’s submissions to the Court of Appeal, her legal team stated that the decision of the Circuit Court did not address the legal points raised and did not engage with the WRC decision before it.
It was submitted by Ms Callanan that “in all the circumstances of this case, the High Court trial judge [Mr Justice O’Donnell] was entitled to exercise his discretion to allow the respondents’ judicial review application, and the appeal should be dismissed”.
Mr Justice Charles Meenan, presiding at the three-judge Court of Appeal said the court would reserve its judgment in the matter.
