Court of Appeal dismisses application to vary final judgment due to procedural error and lack of jurisdiction.

APPROVED

NO REDACTION NEEDED

THE COURT OF APPEAL

CIVIL

Appeal Number: 2025 218

Allen J. Neutral Citation Number [2026] IECA 1

IN THE MATTER OF THE CREDIT INSTITUTIONS (STABILISATION) ACT 2010 BETWEEN/ GERARD DOWLING, PADRAIG MCMANUS, PIOTR SKOCZYLAS, SCOTCHSTONE CAPITAL FUND LIMITED APPELLANTS

- AND –

IRELAND, ATTORNEY GENERAL AND MINISTER FOR FINANCE

RESPONDENTS

RULING OF THE COURT delivered on the 13th day of January, 2026

1. This is an application ostensibly filed pursuant to Court of Appeal Practice Direction CA 14 to vary or rescind a final judgment and order of the Court of Appeal made on 12 December, 2025.

2. On 15 August 2025 the appellants filed a notice of appeal against the judgment of the High Court delivered on 12 March 2025 and consequent order perfected on 28 July 2025. On the same day the notice of appeal was served by e-mail on the Chief State Solicitor by sending it as an attachment to an e-mail directed to a named solicitor in the CSSO. By O. 86A, r. 15(1) the respondents’ notice – unless it was a “pleading” for the purposes of O. 122, r. 5 – ought to have been filed within 21 days. However, in the circumstances set out in my judgment of 12 December 2025 ([2025] IECA 293) the notice of appeal did not come to notice until 1 September 2025 and the respondents’ notice was not filed until 18 September 2025.

3. In the meantime, the 21 days had elapsed and starting at 9:09 on 8 September 2025 – the next day on which the office was open after the 21 days had elapsed – Mr. Skoczylas sent a series of e-mails to the Court of Appeal office by which he sought to forestall the late filing of the respondents’ notice. Mr. Skoczylas’s objection to the filing of a respondents’ notice – which he obviously knew was coming – was based on a misunderstanding of the Rules.

4. Order 86, r. 3(5) provides that:-

“Where a document (other than a notice of appeal) is presented for lodgment late, the Registrar may accept the document for lodgment without prejudice to the right of any party concerned to object to the late lodgment.”

5. In his correspondence with the office, Mr. Skoczylas contended that the Registrar was not entitled to accept a respondents’ notice for filing. For the reasons set out in my judgment of 12 December 2025, that contention was wrong. Mr. Skoczylas correctly anticipated that the respondents would attempt to file a respondents’ notice and that the Registrar would consider accepting it for filing. By reference only to his misunderstanding of the rules, he asserted the Registrar ought not afford preferential treatment to the State respondents to the appeal.

6. On 18 September 2025 the Registrar accepted the respondents’ notice for filing and on the same day it was served on Mr. Skoczylas by e-mail. The respondents’ notice – unless it was a pleading for the purposes of O. 122, r. 5 – was thirteen days late. It was, however, served eight weeks in advance of the first directions hearing, which was listed for 14 November 2025. There was never any sensible basis on which it might have been contended that the appellants were prejudiced by the timing of the respondents’ notice.

7. When the appeal first came before me in the directions list, counsel for the respondents explained why the notice of appeal had not come to attention on 15 August 2025 but Mr. Skoczylas persisted in his opposition to the respondents’ notice. On reflection, I probably ought to have dealt with the matter there and then, but I put back the directions hearing to allow a formal application to be brought to regularise the respondents’ notice.

8. The CSSO promptly issued a motion for an extension of time – if necessary – for the filing and service of the respondents’ notice. That motion was grounded on an affidavit of the solicitor in the CSSO to whose e-mail address the notice of appeal had been sent, and was opposed by Mr. Skoczylas who filed a replying affidavit. I heard the application on 12 December 2025 and it is my ex tempore judgment on that motion and the order which I made

– deeming good the filing and service of the notice of appeal – that is the subject of this application, and ruling.

9. There was nothing in Mr. Skoczylas’s challenge to the jurisdiction of the Registrar to have accepted the respondents’ notice for filing. There was not a shred of justification for Mr. Skoczylas’s assertion that the State respondents in this appeal had been treated any differently to the respondents to any other appeal. Mr. Skoczylas persisted in his technical arguments but in the end did not oppose the extension of time.

10. In his draft notice of motion, grounding affidavit, and written submissions Mr. Skoczylas asserts a fundamental denial of justice and a violation of his constitutionally protected rights going to the root of the fair and constitutional administration of justice.

11. The authorities governing the exceptional potential jurisdiction ostensibly invoked by Mr. Skoczylas are recited in para. (b) of Practice Direction CA 14. They include the judgments of this Court in Scotchstone Capital Fund Limited and Skoczylas v. Ireland and the Attorney General [2022] IECA 275; and Dowling and others v. Minister for Finance [2022] IECA 285): both judgments on applications by Mr. Skoczylas to rescind or vary final orders.

12. In this case, the evidence adduced on the respondent’s motion for an extension of time established that when the e-mail to which the notice of appeal was attached arrived, the CSSO computer generated and sent an “out of office” message, asking the sender to redirect his or her e-mail to two other named solicitors in the CSSO. Mr. Skoczylas did not contest the fact that the out of office message had been sent but swore that he did not receive it. If – on Mr. Skoczylas’s case – the respondents’ notice was late because of a computer glitch, it would have worked a monstrous injustice to shut the respondents out because their respondent’s notice was thirteen days late. And as I have said, he did not in the end oppose an extension of time.

13. It is clear from the papers filed with this application that Mr. Skoczylas disagrees with my approach to the respondents’ motion for an extension of time, if necessary. That application raised an issue of law as to whether the respondents’ notice was a “pleading” within the meaning of O. 122, r. 5 – in which case it would not have been late – but for the reasons given, I declined to decide that question and instead made an order extending the time.

14. Doing the best I can, Mr. Skoczylas’s complaint now appears to be that I dealt with the respondents’ motion on the assumption that the respondents’ notice was late, rather than finding – or adjourning the question to allow a panel to find – that the respondents’ notice was not a “pleading” and so was late, and then making the order which I made by reference to a finding rather than an assumption. Thus, the complaint is not directed to the order but to the reasoning which led to the making of the order. I cannot think of anything further from the threshold which must be met before the jurisdiction which Mr. Skoczylas ostensibly invokes could properly be invoked.

15. Having dealt with the motion on 12 December 2025 I went on to fix a date for the hearing of the appeal – incidentally for a date convenient to Mr. Skoczylas – and to give directions for the exchange of written submissions in the meantime. There is no complaint about any of that.

16. It is neither necessary nor useful to engage with the detail of the criticism of my reasoning. The complaint, at its height, is of error rather than the very root of the fair and constitutional administration injustice. Mr. Skoczylas’s assertion that the application concerns a fundamental denial of justice and violation of constitutionally protected rights does not make it so.

17. This is an application which comes nowhere near engaging the jurisdiction invoked and will be refused accordingly.