Lawyers at Mason Hayes & Curran (MHC) have highlighted a recent Supreme Court judgment as “an important one” for boards of management at schools.

In a long-running case, the Supreme Court has held that the High Court, Labour Court and Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) erred in law when they ordered that a dismissed principal should be re-engaged in the school.

In a note on the firm’s website, the MHC lawyers outline that the case arose from an incident at the school that unearthed an issue with its enrolment figures.

After an investigation by the school and an inspector in the Department of Education, the principal was dismissed. He appealed his dismissal to the Disciplinary Appeals Panel in the Department of Education. The Disciplinary Appeals Panel upheld the decision of the school’s board of management to dismiss the principal.

Appeal to High Court

The principal then appealed to the WRC, which found that the dismissal was unfair and ordered his re-engagement. The matter was appealed to the Labour Court, which also found in favour of the principal.

The board then appealed, on a point of law, to the High Court, which dismissed the appeal, but found that the Labour Court had been in error regarding the date of the deemed re-engagement of the principal (1 September 2017).

It set that order aside and re-engaged the principal from the actual date of dismissal, November 2015. The High Court also ordered the payment of all arrears of salary to be paid immediately, and refused a stay on the order.

The school had appointed a new principal in 2016.

Decision ‘exceeded proper scope’

The school’s board then appealed to the Supreme Court, which held that the High Court had exceeded the proper scope of an appeal, which was on a point of law only.

Instead, the High Court decision had amounted to a decision on the merits of the case that included findings and conclusions that were inconsistent with the findings and conclusions of the Labour Court.

The Supreme Court also stated that the decision of the Labour Court to order re-engagement from September 2017 was wrong in law.

“No proper consideration was given to the exceptional nature of the remedy, the practicability of such re-engagement, or the impact upon the school or on the principal who had been appointed,” the court stated.

‘Limbo’

The Supreme Court held that a school’s board of management could not be treated as the equivalent of a board or management of a commercial enterprise, as it did not have flexibility in the terms of employment that it could offer teachers and could not negotiate a settlement of a dispute in a way a commercial body could.

The court added that it would not be reasonable to expect the school or a business to remain in limbo pending the outcome of protracted legal proceedings.

In the circumstances, it decided not to set aside the Labour Court’s order directing re-engagement of the principal.

The MHC lawyers say that the Supreme Court has outlined what decision-making bodies should take into account when awarding re-instatement and re-engagement under the Unfair Dismissal Act 1997.

“Re-engagement and re-instatement should be reserved for the most exceptional circumstances,” they state.