The Supreme Court has overturned a £52,198 award of damages to a garda who had claimed he was unlawfully suspended from duty for some four years from December 1987.
Garda Hubert Patrick McGrath was charged with embezzlement earlier in 1987 and acquitted of that offence in 1988.
In November 2000, the High Court ruled that the State's conduct over four years had caused Garda McGrath, of Mountrath, Co Laois, to remain unlawfully suspended from duty, causing him distress and upset, and awarded him damages.
The court found the suspension, which began in December 1987 and was formally terminated in January 1993, was negligently prolonged beyond a period that would have been reasonable.
In 1987, Garda McGrath had been accused of embezzlement in failing to account for monies received by him. He was found not guilty after a Circuit Court hearing in May 1988.
The State appealed against the High Court decision to the Supreme Court and yesterday that three-judge court allowed the appeal and quashed the damages award.
Giving the court's decision, Mr Justice Murray, with Ms Justice McGuinness and Mr Justice Hardiman, said the Garda Síochána is a public authority with policing powers, charged with the enforcement of law and the maintenance of public peace and order.
It was entirely consistent with that role and the public interest that the Garda Commissioner has power to suspend any member pending the completion of any inquiry on serious disciplinary charges.
At all stages, the Garda Commissioner was entitled to proceed with an inquiry concerning the disciplinary charges against Garda McGrath until the Supreme Court prohibited such an inquiry in January 1993.
After that judgment, Garda McGrath, who had challenged the inquiry in three sets of judicial review proceedings, had his suspension lifted.
The judge said the closure of the disciplinary proceedings against Garda McGrath had been delayed by litigation between the parties. However, this could not be regarded as amounting to wanton delay on the part of the respondents.
The fact the inquiry had been delayed by litigation did not mean that steps taken for the purpose of the inquiry, such as suspension pending its completion, were rendered unlawful because of the fact the party who initiated the inquiry was ultimately found to have erred in law.
In those circumstances, he held the High Court was incorrect in its findings that the State had acted in a manner or delayed the holding of the inquiry so as to render the suspension invalid.
Mr Justice Murray also dismissed the High Court's finding that the authorities were negligent in their conduct of the disciplinary proceedings against Garda McGrath.
In his view, no grounds had been established upon which the authorities could have been found negligent and the authorities' failures in three sets of judicial review proceedings taken against them by Garda McGrath did not in themselves establish negligence.
