Published Tuesday, 13 December 2011
Lawyers for the Department of Education are challenging a ruling that Loreto Grammar had a legitimate expectation to the financing for a new school on its existing site in Omagh.
However, judges were told that Ms Ruane was not blinkered towards an alternative option, and even content for a potential funding mechanism to change.
Earlier this year, a High Court judge ruled that the conduct of the former minister and departmental officials in frustrating the school's expectations amounted to an abuse of power.
Mr Justice McCloskey also held that an unjustifiable breach of trust had occurred over the alleged promise of funding.
His findings are now being appealed in front of a three-member judicial panel headed by Lord Chief Justice Sir Declan Morgan.
The case centres on £14.6m of investment Loreto Grammar School believed was promised in 2004 for a new build through a public private partnership (PPP).
It was announced by the then direct-rule minister Barry Gardiner as part of a major expansion plan for schools across Northern Ireland.
Since then, however, proposals have been advanced for a shared education campus on the site of the old Lisanelly military barracks.
In summer 2010, Loreto was included in eight schools rejected for new building plans for non-compliance with policy.
Mr Justice McCloskey ruled that the conduct, delay and inactivity of the then minister and Department officials frustrated the legitimate expectation that a new Loreto Grammar School, financed by public funding, would be built on the existing site by 2010 at the latest.
But Paul Maguire QC, for the Department, told the Court of Appeal that the former Minister had shown she was prepared to agree to change from the PPP model.
He said this should not be ignored, "especially if... there seems to be some suggestion that the Minister was blindly following the Lisanelly option and was adverse to Loreto".
The barrister added: "If the Minister had been adverse to Loreto this would have been a prime opportunity for the Minister to have kissed goodbye to the Loreto project by not allowing the change of funding route."
"There is nothing, as of February 2009, to suggest the Minister was in any sense not perfectly content to see a change of funding route occur."
"That is far from consistent with any view that the Minister had any form of malice towards Loreto."
The appeal continues.