Court awards school costs in funding case

The High Court yesterday awarded a school in Co Clare, based on the Steiner method of education, the substantial costs of the school's unsuccessful challenge to the Department of Education's refusal to fund it.

The State had strongly resisted the application by Cooleenbridge school, Tuamgraney, Co Clare, for the costs of the 20-day hearing taken by Nora O'Shiel, a pupil, suing by her mother, Ms Margaret Boyle O'Shiel, other pupils and their parents, and Cooleenbridge Ltd, owner and manager of the school.

The State argued it was entitled to the costs because of the court's decision last month that the State was entitled to refuse to fund the school because of its failure to employ teachers with State-recognised qualifications and its inadequate provision for the teaching of Irish.

However, the plaintiffs argued they should receive the costs in light of the findings of fact made by the court, the consequences of the judgment for the State and the plaintiffs and because the case fell into the category of constitutional litigation for which there were precedents for awarding costs to an unsuccessful plaintiff.

Mr Diarmaid McGuinness SC, for the plaintiffs, noted the court had found there should have been a more searching and pro-active approach to the school's request for funding and that the State had never itemised all the relevant criteria for recognition and therefore funding of primary schools.

In her reserved judgment on the costs issue yesterday, Ms Justice Laffoy said the issues raised in the case extended beyond the sectional interests of the plaintiffs and whether the school should be funded by the State.

For the first time, the court had had to consider the extent of the State's obligation to provide for free primary education in the context of the guarantee of parental freedom of choice contained in Article 42.1, the judge said.

"I think it is in the broader public interest that the extent of the obligations and rights created by Article 42 be clarified, particularly in the context of a total absence of legislation defining and delimiting the obligations and rights in question, the context in which these proceedings were determined."

It was also significant that the primary beneficiaries of the proceedings, had the school been successful, would have been children who had to rely on their parents to invoke the court's jurisdiction to vindicate their constitutional rights.

The judge noted the case was at hearing for 20 days, including some 17 days of evidence much of which she ultimately considered irrelevant with regard to the view she took on the issues of law involved.

However, she added, the "broad-brush" approach adopted by the plaintiffs was necessitated by the State's failure to outline from the outset the Department of Education's requirements for recognition of primary schools and to pinpoint the respects in which the school did not comply with those. The requirements for recognition were first requested in an April 1995 letter to the Department from the solicitors for the school.

In the circumstances, the judge said the appropriate course was to allow the plaintiffs their costs, not merely partial costs.