LAST UPDATE | 19 mins ago

A UNIVERSITY COLLEGE Dublin (UCD) medical student who claims she was raped by a fellow student has begun her appeal against the High Court’s dismissal of her case against the university.

The Court of Appeal heard submissions from both sides today before reserving judgment until the next legal term, likely in October.

The student’s counsel argued UCD misapplied its own academic regulations after accepting that exceptional circumstances had affected her exam performance.

The student originally sued UCD over its handling of her academic progression after she alleged she was raped by another medical student in February 2023.

She claimed the university failed to make reasonable allowances after the alleged assault and subsequent pregnancy, forcing her to choose between continuing her studies and accessing healthcare.

The university denied the claims.

In April, the High Court dismissed her action, finding UCD had acted lawfully and had not breached its own policies or discriminated against the student.

The court found the university had made significant efforts to support her and was entitled to require her to follow an academic plan before progressing through her medical degree.

The student has appealed that decision, although her counsel, Ciaran Craven SC, told the Court of Appeal the appeal is much narrower than the original case and does not challenge many of the factual findings made by the High Court.

Instead, he said the central issue was whether the university had correctly interpreted and applied its regulations after it accepted that exceptional circumstances surrounding the student’s missed and failed exams in 2023 warranted the award of six IX (extenuating circumstances) grades.

Craven said the student completed her first year of medicine before failing three modules in the first semester of second year in December 2022.

She was entitled to resit those exams alongside her second-semester assessments in May 2023.

He told the court that, following what he described as a serious incident in February 2023, the student became pregnant. During the May examination period, he said, she sat some exams, failed others and was absent from three while undergoing a termination of the pregnancy.

Craven said the circumstances were disclosed to a student adviser later that year and, in October 2023, UCD awarded the student six IX grades after accepting that exceptional circumstances had affected her performance.

However, the university also required her to follow one of a number of academic plans before progressing.

“That’s what this case is fundamentally about,” Craven said. “Did the university follow and apply its own regulations properly?”

He argued that, by awarding the IX grades, UCD had effectively “reset the clock” and was therefore wrong to rely on the student’s earlier academic record when deciding she should follow an academic plan before progressing through her course.

Alternatively, Craven argued that if the university was entitled to impose such a plan, it had failed to properly consult her before doing so.

Opening UCD’s response, Feichín McDonagh SC said the university had been aware for months that the student was struggling academically before ultimately awarding the IX grades in October 2023.

He told the court UCD had repeatedly attempted to support the student through academic mentors, student advisers and a series of academic plans designed to manage her workload.

McDonagh said an IX grade was “a placeholder grade” which allowed a student to complete assessments at a later date, but argued that the award of such grades did not determine how much work would be required to complete the course.

“The fact of an award of an IX does not speak to the workload the student will have to undertake to remediate,” McDonagh said.

He also argued there was no inconsistency in the university later offering the student the opportunity to sit all six remediation exams in September 2024 and again in May 2025, saying those offers came after she was no longer attempting to complete the assessments alongside a full third-year workload, which had been the university’s concern when it devised the academic plans. 

McDonagh told the court the university only learned in April 2024 that the student alleged her pregnancy followed a sexual assault by another UCD student, prompting staff to reconsider her academic plan.

After hearing submissions from both sides, the three judges reserved judgment until the next legal term in October, with a court date to be decided in the near future.

Before adjourning, Justice Donald Binchy encouraged both parties to use the intervening period to see if the dispute could still be resolved, saying the court was concerned about the potential loss of the student’s medical career while stressing his remarks should not be taken as indicating any view on the merits of the appeal.