Case Note: Dellway Investments and Ors v National Asset Management Agency and Ors

• Author: Ruth Keating
• Position: Senior Freshman LLB Candidate, Trinity College Dublin
• Pages: 133-142

© 2012 Ruth Keating and Dublin University Law Society

CASE NOTE: DELLWAY INVESTMENTS AND ORS V

NATIONAL ASSET MANAGEMENT AGENCY AND ORS

RUTH KEATING*

Introduction

The appropriate role of the courts in matters of contemporary controversy

and public importance continues to be a terribly vexed question. It is

hardly surprising then that the economic and fiscal crisis which has

engulfed the country in the past few years and the measures adopted to

grapple with it have come under scrutiny by the judiciary. The recent

decision of the Supreme Court in Dellway Investments v National Asset

Management Agency

1

is of singular significance, in that it is the first time

the courts have been called upon to scrutinise the “cures”

2

enacted to deal

with Ireland’s economic difficulties. Dellway can be said to diminish the

requirement that a constitutional right be directly affected by a decision for

the right to fair procedures to exist. The great benefit of this development

is conceptual simplicity.

3

Further, the apparent end of the distinction

between ‘rights’ on the one hand and ‘interests’ on the other, is a

development that streamlines our administrative law and can be

welcomed.

I. Background: The National Asset Management Agency

Act, 2009

The National Asset Management Agency

4

was established in 2009 under

the National Asset Management Agency Act, 2009

5

to manage both good

* Senior Freshman LLB Candidate, Trinity College Dublin.

1

Dellway Investments and Ors v National Asset Management Agency and Ors [2011] IESC 4

[hereinafter Dellway].

2

Dellway Investments and Ors v National Asset Management Agency and Ors [2010] IEHC

364, at [1.1].

3

See David Kenny, “Fair Procedures in Irish Administrative Law: Toward a Constitutional

Duty to Act Fairly in Dellway Investments v NAMA” (2012) DULJ forthcoming. For further

discussion see Lord Wolf, Jeffrey Jowell and Andrew Le Sueur, 'H6PLWK¶V-XGLFLDO5HYLHZ

(6th ed., Sweet & Maxwell, 2007), at 359-360.

4

[Hereinafter NAMA].

5

[Hereinafter NAMA Act, 2009].