The Mahon planning tribunal is seeking to prevent the Sunday Business Post from carrying out a vital role by seeking to restrain the newspaper from publishing documents deemed confidential by the inquiry, the High Court was told by counsel for the newspaper yesterday.
The hearing of the tribunal's injunction application was adjourned yesterday to an unspecified date. Mr Justice Peter Kelly noted a Supreme Court decision earlier yesterday, which addressed a wide range of issues regarding the operation of tribunals, and upholding property developer Owen O'Callaghan's challenge to procedures adopted by the Mahon tribunal. He said he might require further submissions from the sides.
In an affidavit, Anthony Dinan, group managing director of Thomas Crosbie Holdings Ltd and a director of Post Publications Ltd, said the information relating to the Mahon tribunal published by the newspaper last October, and which had led to the tribunal's action against the newspaper, was not confidential. The court adjourned for about an hour yesterday to allow the sides consider the Supreme Court judgment in the proceedings brought by Mr O'Callaghan.
The Supreme Court dismissed the tribunal's appeal against a High Court decision upholding Mr O'Callaghan's challenge to the tribunal's refusal to give him statements made by builder Tom Gilmartin.
When the court resumed, Mr Justice Kelly commented that the Supreme Court decision seemed to create more problems for the tribunal's counsel, Paul O'Higgins SC, than it did for counsel for the newspaper, Eoin McCullough SC.
Mr O'Higgins said the Supreme Court had made clear in part of its judgment that the tribunal was obliged to keep information confidential until such time as the tribunal hearing was reached.
Mr Justice Kelly said he was referring to the judgment in its totality. Mr O'Higgins said the judgment was wholly consistent with the case he had already made in that there was an obligation on the tribunal to maintain confidentiality.
Mr McCullough said the tribunal's case was that confidentiality applies to all materials because the tribunal says so. However, the Supreme Court decision in the O'Callaghan case had made it clear that this was simply not so. The tribunal had not described why the documents circulated by it were confidential and had not established that the newspaper had done anything improper.