A driver's licence: fatal in Swords, trivial in Rathgar

I’m not arguing the reasonableness or otherwise of any of the Tribunal’s findings.

I’m just making the point that the two cases are factually distinguishable.
 
Fair point @Sarenco. You're right that in Rathgar the landlord later produced his passport and the solicitor swore an affidavit, with nothing similar in Swords.

But it wasn't the basis of either decision. Rathgar's ratio was that a driving licence was a non-material deviation under the Interpretation Act — the defect didn't invalidate the declaration in the first place. The passport gets a mention, but the finding rests on immateriality, not on a later cure.

Swords took the opposite view of the identical defect: a licence "is not a valid ID," the declaration non-compliant, and — having expressly considered the slip rule (s.64A) — refused it as material and incurable.

So they didn't split on the passport. They split on the prior question: is a driver's-licence defect immaterial (Rathgar) or fatal and beyond the slip rule (Swords)? Same defect, opposite answers.
 
Well, the Tribunal specifically referenced the subsequent mending and the solicitor’s affidavit as a consideration in concluding that it could apply Section 12 of the Interpretation Act 2005 and found that the Statutory Declaration was valid.

Although, I’ve no doubt that the broader behaviour of the respective parties in both cases had a bearing on the different findings.
 
Fair. You're right, and I overstated it. Rathgar did weigh the passport and the affidavit in applying s.12.

I would say though Swords didn't fail for want of a cure. It held the defect material and the slip rule simply unavailable ("not satisfied that the failure... is immaterial").
Rathgar treated it as the kind of non-material defect the curative provisions can reach.

So. One tribunal said curable in principle, the other said material and beyond the slip rule. The Swords landlord would have had to get past that finding before any passport could help him.
 
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