Judge throws out rugby club challenge in Foxrock playing fields row

DCM Editorial Summary: This story has been independently rewritten and summarised for DCM readers to highlight key developments relevant to the region. Original reporting by Irish Times, click this post to read the original article.

Legal action by a rugby club to stop a south Dublin parish selling a playing field to a local GAA club have been thrown out by the High Court.

St Brigid’s rugby club, which has used the ground alongside Geraldine P Moran GAA for many years, claimed the sale was unlawful as the Foxrock Parish Sports Field was held on trust “for the benefit of all the children of the parish”.

Due to its trust status, any sale of the five-acre playing fields was unlawful, claimed the rugby club which caters to primary school-aged players.

However, Mr Justice Liam Kennedy, citing “the complete absence of any evidence of an intention to create a charitable trust”, found that the claim “has no reasonable prospect of success and is bound to fail”.

He said the “contemporaneous documentary evidence overwhelmingly supports the defendants’ position” as did affidavits from people who had been involved in the initial decision to buy the land in 1959.

“Key factual assertions in the statement of claim [by the rugby club] are evidently unsustainable,” Judge Kennedy ruled.

He decided that the defendants in the case – Dublin diocese’s St Laurence O’Toole Diocesan Trust and the parish priest of Foxrock – had met the high standard required and “established that the case has no reasonable chance of success”.

“I am satisfied that the plaintiff’s factual allegation amounts to no more than a mere assertion…and it is an abuse of process to maintain a claim based on a speculative factual assertion” where there is no reasonable prospect of evidence emerging at trial to support the assertion.

As the rugby club had not suggested that there was any other reason the sale could not go ahead apart from the question of the trust status, the judge said, there was no legal impediment to the disposal of the field and the parish and the diocesan trust were “free to enter the proposed agreement with the GAA club”.

A spokesman for the rugby club said it was “disappointed and saddened” by the judgment.

“This affects more than the rugby playing children of the parish. This field has benefited the local schools and many children of the parish,” Morgan Cassidy said.

He said club officials would be talking to their legal team over coming days to discuss a possible appeal of Judge Kennedy’s ruling.

The row dates back to an offer in the summer of 2024 by the parish to sell the playing field, situated just beside Dunnes Stores in Cornlescourt and adjacent to the N11 Dublin-Wexford road, to Geraldine P Morans for €1 million.

The church said at the time that it was proposing to sell the land, acquired for just IR£4,250 back in 1959 as it could not afford to invest the money required to upgrade the facilities.

The church’s main requirement at the time was that it continue to be used for sport and community purposes and that all existing users would be accommodated.

In a side agreement between the church and the GAA club, drawn up as part of the intended sale, the GAA club agreed to permit other users of the fields continued access “in the same manner as has taken place to date in accordance with the extent of their use to date”.

However, a separate letter between the church and the rugby club stated, inter alia, that St Brigid’s “acknowledges that any right to the future use of it for sporting purposes will be subject…to the consent of, and agreement with, the GAA club”.