Appeal dismissed for failing to meet arguability threshold for judicial review leave against judges.

APPROVED NO REDACTION NEEDED

THE COURT OF APPEAL

Court of Appeal Record No: 2025/170

High Court Record No.: 2025/29 IA

Neutral Citation No. [2026] IECA 7

Butler J. Hyland J. Owens J.

Between/

ARNAUD GAULTIER

APPLICANT/ APPELLANT

V

FOUR JUDGES OF THE COURT OF APPEAL, IRELAND AND THE ATTORNEY

GENERAL

RESPONDNETS

MARK REILLY AND AINE MCGUIGAN

NOTICE PARTIES

JUDGMENT of Ms. Justice Butler delivered ex tempore on the 12th of January 2026

1. This is an ex tempore judgment dealing with Mr. Gaultier’s appeal from the order and judgment of the High Court (Gearty J. [2025] IEHC 334) refusing him leave to apply for judicial review. This ruling will necessarily be brief because we have found that the grounds advanced by Mr. Gaultier in his intended proceedings do not meet the threshold of arguability required for the grant of leave under the decision of the Supreme Court in G v. DPP [1994] 1 IR 374. However, we have read all of the papers filed by Mr. Gaultier in relation to this case, including the additional authorities handed into court this morning, and we have considered all of the arguments made by him both in his submissions before the court today, in his written submissions to the High Court and in the papers filed in support of his application for leave to apply for judicial review.

2. The intended proceedings seek orders of quo warranto against four named judges of the Court of Appeal. The underlying complaint in respect of the first three of these judges is that a judgment delivered by a panel comprising theses judges interfered with Mr. Gaultier’s constitutionally protected right to a good name to such an extent that those judges violated the declaration they made under Article 34.6.1 of the Constitution and consequently they should be deemed or treated as having vacated their judicial office. Mr. Gaultier is careful to say that he was not seeking the removal of those judges, rather something akin to their suspension whereby they would continue to hold office and to be paid but would not be entitled to sit as judges.

3. In relation to the fourth judge, who is now the President of the Court of Appeal, Mr. Gaultier’s underlying complaint relates to a decision in which it is alleged that the court refused to allow an individual in proceedings to make any submission before ruling against that party. The other two judges who sat on the relevant panel are no longer judges of the Court of Appeal and are not named in these proceedings. Mr. Gaultier was not a party to those proceedings although he was present in court at the material time.

4. Mr. Gaultier does not have locus standi to bring proceedings based on the treatment or alleged mistreatment of a third party in proceedings to which he, Mr. Gaultier, was not a party. The rules regarding locus standi serve an important purpose in litigation which is well illustrated in this case. It appears that those proceedings may have raised issues concerning the entitlement of an individual to represent a company. Without knowing anything more about the case – and Mr. Gaultier is not in a position to provide more information since he was not a party to the case – this court cannot assume that the failure to hear the individual in question constituted a legal error much less a violation of that individual’s rights. Consequently, Mr. Gaultier is not entitled to pursue the relief claimed against the fourth respondent and his subsequent interactions with the fourth respondent, of which he makes complaint, do not provide him with the necessary locus standi.

5. The relief sought in the intended proceedings against the first three respondents is primarily orders of quo warranto against those judges and/or declarations to the effect that they have infringed their judicial declarations or breached the law in other respects. Such relief is manifestly ill-founded. An order of quo warranto is directed at establishing the legal authority of an office-holder to act. Mr. Gaultier accepted, as he did before the High Court, that the judges in question were validly appointed. His argument is that having been validly appointed they lost their entitlement to sit as judges by reason of having vacated their offices due to an infringement of his rights which he alleges is a breach of the constitutional declaration a judge is required to take.

6. Once judges have been validly appointed under the Constitution then, subject to their voluntary resignation or retirement on reaching the stipulated age, they may only be removed from office for stated misbehaviour by the Oireachtas following the procedure set out in Article 35.4 of the Constitution. There is no middle ground in which a judge who has been validly appointed continues to hold office while simultaneously being deemed to have vacated or otherwise being suspended from that office in the manner suggested by Mr. Gaultier.

7. Unsurprisingly, Mr. Gaultier has not advanced any legal authority in support of this proposition. The extrajudicial writings of Murray J. to which Mr. Gaultier refers emphasise the important principles of judicial impartiality and independence. These are core principles reflected in the legal orders of both this State and the European Union and, at an international level, in the Bangalore principles. The application of these principles is not in any way disputed, and they are fully accepted by this court. However, Mr. Gaultier has not advanced any arguable grounds for suggesting that there has been a breach by any of the named judges of these important overarching principles.

8. Mr. Gaultier relies on the entitlement to an effective remedy which is reflected in Article 19.1 of the Treaty of the European Union and which forms part of our constitutional jurisprudence (per Hogan J. in Efe v. Minister for Justice [2011] 2 IR 798). However, the entitlement to a remedy only comes into play if a litigant has established grounds upon which they would be entitled to relief. Here, the remedy sought has no basis in Irish law and the grounds advanced do not make any stateable claim upon which relief of any kind could be granted.

9. In essence, Mr. Gaultier is unhappy with a passage in a judgment delivered by a panel of this court comprising the first three judges named as respondents. Mr. Gaultier believes that this wrongly accuses him of a criminal act. The passage itself comprises the author judge’s interpretation of the email sent by Mr. Gaultier, the relevant parts of which are set out in full so that any reader of the judgment will be fully aware of what Mr. Gaultier wrote and not just the judge’s interpretation of it. It is also very difficult to see how this passage could reasonably be construed in the manner in which Mr. Gaultier is attempting to construe it. In reality, the proceedings comprise an attempted collateral attack on the decision in question which remains extant and has not been overturned on appeal.

10. The law does not provide – and is not required to provide – a remedy against a judge personally merely because the litigant is unhappy with the decision made by that judge. The legal system provides avenues of appeal for litigants dissatisfied with decisions in their cases. Under the Judicial Council Act 2019 there is a procedure for making a complaint against a judge on the grounds of judicial misconduct. However, a litigant is not entitled to attempt to remove certain judges from hearing his litigation merely because they have previously given decisions which were unfavourable to him and/or decisions the terms of which he does not agree with.

11. Mr. Gaultier has quite fairly described the judgment of Gearty J. as clear, detailed and well-built, by which I presume he means well-structured. When asked to identify what was wrong with that judgment, the only issue to which he pointed was the reference to the removal of the judges in paras. 1.1 and 19.1 which, he said, should be a reference to the suspension of those judges. It is not clear from the papers upon which the application for leave to apply for judicial review was based that what was sought was suspension as opposed to the deemed vacation of office (i.e. the removal) of the judges in question. Either way this single point does not, in my view, undermine the judgment of Gearty J. in any way.

12. Ms. Justice Gearty was entirely correct in her analysis and treatment of the remedy of quo warranto. Notwithstanding the fact that the remedy sought was wholly inappropriate, Gearty J. nonetheless proceeded to analyse the core challenge and the basis upon which relief was sought. In our view, there is no legal error in this analysis or in the conclusions reached by Gearty J. in this regard. In the circumstances, Mr. Gaultier’s appeal must be refused.

13. In circumstances where this was an ex parte application and consequently an ex parte appeal, the question of costs does not arise.