Millionaire businessman Mr Dermot Desmond has failed in his Supreme Court bid to halt the reading into record of a report into the controversial sale of a site in Dublin.
The report by solicitor Mr John Glackin, who was appointed under the Companies Acts in 1991, concerns the sale to Telecom of the old Johnston Mooney & O'Brien site in Ballsbridge. The report was published in July 1993.
Mr Desmond was seeking to prevent it from being read into the public record of the Moriarty tribunal. He had claimed that such repeated references were damaging to his reputation and good name and that the report was irrelevant to the tribunal's investigation of decisions in the mid-1990s relating to the award of a second GSM phone licence to ESAT Digifone.
Rejecting the challenge on all grounds, Ms Justice Denham said there was "a certain air of shadow boxing in this case" and to challenge references to a public document by the tribunal was to assume an immense burden.
She held it would be "an extraordinary intrusion" on the working of the tribunal for a court to exclude references by the tribunal and its counsel in questions or submissions to this public document. She could envisage such an intrusion arising "only in wholly extraordinary circumstances" and such circumstances did not arise in this case.
She was satisfied the tribunal was investigating the award of the State's second mobile phone licence within its terms of reference and the introduction of the Glackin report was not outside those terms. The Glackin report was an investigation into former business dealings of Mr Desmond, was a public document, and it was not unreasonable to consider it relevant to the work of the tribunal, she added.
Nor was there any necessity, under fair procedure requirements, for Mr Desmond to be given advance notice of the questioning of witnesses about the Glackin report.
The three judge court consisting of Ms Justcie Denham, Ms Justice McGuinness and Mr Justice McCracken upheld the High Court's dismissal last August of Mr Desmond's challenge to decisions of the tribunal permitting the Glackin report to be read.
The proceedings arose from the Moriarty tribunal inquiry into decisions taken by former Minister Michael Lowry leading to the granting of the State's second mobile phone licence to the Esat Digifone/Telenor/IIU consortium. Mr Desmond is involved with IIU Ltd.
The Glackin report dealt with the sale of the Johnston Mooney and O'Brien site at Ballsbridge, Dublin, to Telecom Éireann, and the involvement of two property companies in which Mr Desmond was found to have an interest. In the High Court last August, lawyers for Mr Desmond said he had always disputed the Glackin report.