The High Court will inspect the sworn information used to obtain a warrant to search Francis McGuinness’s premises, after deciding that the competing claims for disclosure and privilege should be weighed against the document itself.
Mr McGuinness brought the application in his damages action against the Garda Commissioner, Ireland and the Attorney General. The action concerns a search by gardaí on 23 August 2014 and the seizure of property. It includes claims of negligence, misfeasance in public office, trespass, conversion and detinue, and breach of constitutional rights. Those are claims in the civil proceedings, not findings in this judgment.
The warrant was issued by a District Court judge on 21 August 2014 under section 10 of the Criminal Justice (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, as substituted by the Criminal Justice Act 2006. It authorised a search at Hillcrest, Cloghran, County Dublin, for evidence relating to a vehicle registered 98 D 55178. The warrant said the vehicle had been recovered at Quinn Packaging in Ballyconnell, County Cavan. Mr McGuinness had already received a copy of the warrant; his application sought the sworn information used to support it.
The application was interlocutory and was not brought as a discovery application under the ordinary civil procedure rules. The judge said the pleadings were not closed and the relevant procedural steps had not been followed. He nevertheless considered the merits after the defendants agreed to address them, without prejudice to their position that the application was premature and procedurally irregular. He left the validity of the procedure for another case in which it is directly raised and properly argued.
The defendants argued that the sworn information was protected by informer privilege, public interest privilege concerning an ongoing criminal investigation, or both. In affidavits, Detective Inspector Fergus Treanor described investigations into attacks on properties connected with the Aventas, formerly Quinn, group. He said the investigation involved Gardaí, the Police Service of Northern Ireland and police forces in Europe, and that disclosure could expose confidential informants or jeopardise the operation. He also said the vehicle named in the warrant was believed to have been used in an attack on the Quinn packaging plant and was connected with Mr McGuinness. These were statements in evidence, not findings by the court.
The judge noted that a claim of privilege based on a real threat to an informant’s life may require the court to inspect the material. Applying principles that require a case-by-case assessment of competing public interests, he said he proposed to examine the sworn information to identify and weigh those interests. The judgment provided here ends at that point; it does not state the result of that examination or whether the information was ultimately disclosed.