A challenge by the Minister for Health and Children against a High Court decision allowing hepatitis C victims to appeal awards they had accepted from the hepatitis C tribunal has been deferred to January 13th.
The appeal was to have begun in the Supreme Court on Thursday, but was adjourned when the Chief Justice, Mr Justice Keane, one of the five judges on the bench, disqualified himself from hearing the case.
He did so after lawyers for the hepatitis C victim raised the question as to whether the Chief Justice should hear the appeal.
Yesterday Mr Justice Keane explained that he was excusing himself as he was a member of the Superior Courts Rules Committee which made the Rules of the Superior Courts (Appeals from the Hepatitis C Compensation Tribunal), 1998.
Solicitors for claimants had directed his attention in a letter to the possibility that, in making the rules, he might be regarded objectively as having prejudged one or more of the issues which arose on the hearing of the appeal.
Having considered the written submissions and the issues which appeared to arise on appeal, he was satisfied that no such objective view could be formed by any reasonable person.
However, counsel for the claimant had said his client's concern was not merely that there might be a perception of prejudgment of the issues on the Chief Justice's part, but that there might also be a perception of bias on his part, having been a member of the authority which had made the rules which were partly the subject of the appeal.
The Chief Justice said members of the superior courts had been sitting as members of the rule-making authority for the superior courts as a matter of public duty almost since the foundation of the State. Matters affecting the construction of the rules inevitably came before such judges in the course of their judicial duties.
He knew of no reasonable basis on which any objective person could assume that judges in that position would be automatically precluded by presumed bias or an assumption of prejudgment from considering and adjudicating upon such caes with appropriate judicial independence.
However, as the matter had been raised and pressed by counsel for the claimant, the Chief Justice said he thought it would be more than prudent that, in the particular circumstances of the case, in the interests of justice, he should disqualify himself.
