Another legal challenge to the Flood tribunal was initiated in the High Court yesterday. Mr John Finnegan, an estate agent and auctioneer, who has been questioned by the tribunal in connection with the affairs of the former government minister, Mr Ray Burke, was given leave to seek a number of orders against the tribunal.
In judicial review proceedings, Mr Finnegan, of Seapoint House, Seapoint Avenue, Monkstown, Co Dublin, is seeking to confine the tribunal's inquiry into his affairs.
He is seeking a declaration that inquiries by the tribunal into any of his affairs "other than the authorisation of the payment to Mr Raphael Burke by Canio Ltd" is outside its powers.
He is also seeking an order restraining the "undue exercise of power" by the tribunal and a declaration that, in the special circumstances in which Mr Finnegan is a witness at the tribunal, its procedure has failed to protect his rights under Article 40 of the Constitution.
Mr Finnegan wants a further order prohibiting any examination of his business affairs or accounts "not the subject of payments to Mr Raphael Burke" or his companies except for the purpose of segregating such payments as outside the scope of the tribunal.
There is a further application to prevent any inquiry into Mr Finnegan's "alleged wrongful conduct" complained of by the tribunal, since he did not have notice of such matter.
Mr Finnegan also got leave to seek an order prohibiting any further inquiry by the tribunal in relation to him, and preventing the continuation in public of an inquiry into his affairs, pending a determination that these affairs come within the tribunal's remit.
He is arguing that the procedures of the tribunal fail to vindicate, protect or safeguard his constitutional rights and, in fact, operate so as to subject him to unjust attack on those rights.
Mr Justice O'Donovan made the case returnable to court next Monday.