Remarkable but predictable ruling

IVOR CALLELY has won a remarkable — but, it has to be said, very predictable — victory in the courts.

He had essentially been found guilty by a committee of his Seanad peers of fiddling his expenses. The High Court yesterday overturned that finding and said Senator Callely had been wronged.

It now raises the possibility that, rather than Mr Callely being forced to repay monies to the Seanad, the Seanad may now have to pay a very substantial sum of money to him to cover both his docked pay and his legal costs.

The background to this case is by now well established. Following his appointment to the Seanad in mid-2007, Mr Callely began claiming travel-related expenses from a family-owned property in West Cork rather than the family home in Clontarf, Dublin.

When this emerged in the public domain, a Seanad committee was set up to investigate. Mr Callely explained that, for various reasons, he had begun spending the bulk of his time — circa 60% — in West Cork, and that his expenses were therefore perfectly legitimate.

The Seanad committee disagreed, and found that, in claiming expenses from West Cork, Mr Callely had committed an act of a “serious and grave nature” by “misrepresenting his normal place of residence for the purpose of claiming allowances”.

They recommended he be censured by the Seanad and suspended for 20 days without pay. The Seanad agreed to these recommendations, and Mr Callely served his suspension but announced he was taking a legal action to challenge the committee’s findings.

From the off, it was clear that Mr Callely appeared to have a strong case — as was reported in this paper at the time. This was because, in his defence before the committee, Mr Callely had argued that his West Cork house fitted the definition of “normal place of residence” as laid out by the Department of Finance for the purpose of claiming expenses.

This definition refers to “a premises which, though not necessarily one’s permanent and principal abode, is used for a period which is both of some length and for a purpose which is not ad hoc and goes beyond mere shelter in passage, such as a few nights in a hotel”.

It seemed abundantly clear that Mr Callely did, indeed, meet this definition.

Nevertheless, the committee found that on “the weight of all the facts taken together” — such as that his constituency office was still in Dublin, his post went to his Clontarf address and he was registered to vote in the capital — Mr Callely had intentionally misrepresented his normal place of residence.

But in what was tantamount to an admission that Mr Callely had not actually breached the Department of Finance definition, the committee recommended its wording be tightened.

“The committee believes the expenses regulations would benefit from a clearer and more robust definition of ‘normal place of residence’,” it said in its report.

It was arguably the closest the committee came to admitting that in a court of law, it would have been difficult to stand up the allegations against Mr Callely.

And sure enough, that is exactly what has happened now. The High Court yesterday found that the committee had not at all established that Mr Callely had misrepresented his normal place of residence.

If it accepts the judgment, the Seanad will have to repay Mr Callely’s docked wages, as well as his legal costs. But it’s much more likely that the Seanad will first appeal the judgment to the Supreme Court. The money is not the reason why. The real issue at stake here is the principle of separation of powers — ie, that the judiciary would not interfere with the functions ascribed to the legislature.