Court of Appeal upholds decision to allow students expelled over white powder video to return to school

The Court of Appeal has upheld a judge’s decision to grant injunctions allowing two Leaving Cert students facing expulsion for videoing and posting on social media a classmate snorting some white powder during a class, to return to school.

Last year the students, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, secured injunctions against the school's board of management allowing the students attend class and continue their education for the academic year pending the full and final determination of their proceedings.

The injunctions, granted by Mr Justice Max Barrett were sought as part of their High Court actions aimed at quashing the school's decision to expel them.

​Details of the incident, which involved the snorting of sugar by the other pupil, were published in an Irish daily newspaper.

The board of management appealed that decision.

In its judgement, the three-judge appeal court comprised of Mr Justice George Birmingham, Ms Justice Marie Whelan and Ms Justice Caroline Costello held that Mr Justice Barrett’s approach to the application "was the correct one."

Giving the court's decision the Court's President Mr Justice Birmingham said the High Court's analysis of the case was "a careful one and an appropriate one".

The President said he agreed with the conclusions reached by the High Court as to where the greater risk of an injustice lay.

Mr Justice Birmingham added he accepted the two boys had established a strong arguable case that the decision to expel them was irrational.

The court noted that the students had appealed the decisions to expel them to the Department of Education.

Those appeals were considered before independent three-person committees under Section 29 of the 1998 Education Act (known as a "Section 29 Committee).

In the case of one of the students, the committee reversed the decision to expel him, which it was claimed by his lawyers rendered the matter moot or pointless.

However, the other student was unsuccessful in his Section 29 appeal but remained in the school on foot of the High Court order.

The Section 29 committee decision confirming the second boy's expulsion has been challenged in separate judicial review proceedings.

Mr Justice Birmingham added in what was an unusual and unsatisfactory state of affairs the High Court should have made it clear in its decision that its intervention was limited to the duration to the determination of the matter.

The determination, he added, would have come about either by way of a decision by the judge hearing the full challenge against the expulsions or throughout the appeals process coming to a conclusion.

The students sued after they were informed following an investigation of the incident the school had made "a preliminary decision" that they should be excluded.

The students claimed those decisions should be quashed on grounds including it is in breach of fair procedures, disproportionate and flawed.

Mr Justice Barrett had granted the students injunctions after he was satisfied that they had made out a strong case and the balance of justice favoured the granting of the injunctions.

He said it was of significance that the court was "not dealing with students who had taken any illegal substance," but with two schoolboys who "engaged in an unplanned, impromptu occurrence as it unfolded before them."

The video had been shared on a social media platform with a limited number of participants. It was never alleged they had consumed something illegal, he added.