The Supreme Court allowed an appeal by the members of the Tribunal of Inquiry into Certain Planning Matters and Payments and replaced a High Court order with an injunction restricting the Sunday Business Post’s use or publication of material circulated in advance of Tribunal hearings.
The injunction applies to information or documents, or parts of them, forming part of or arising from material circulated by the Tribunal to vindicate the rights of people intended to appear before it. Publication, use or exploitation is restrained until the material is disclosed at a public hearing or the Tribunal gives express permission. Documents already in the public domain are excluded, except that the newspaper is restrained from publicising that they formed part of the circulated material.
The ruling was delivered by Mr Justice Geoghegan on 29 March 2007. The newspaper had opposed the Tribunal’s request, arguing that circulation by the Tribunal could not make material confidential regardless of its nature or content, and that the proposed injunctions were too wide. The High Court had refused the requested relief, principally because of their scope.
The Tribunal said leaks of material from its private investigative work could prejudice the rights and reputations of people who might face allegations at public hearings, undermine its work and discourage people from assisting. It described a process of circulating briefs in advance to people potentially affected by evidence, so they could prepare to respond. The Tribunal’s solicitor accepted that public documents, such as company searches, were not confidential in themselves, but said their inclusion and context in a brief should remain private until the hearing.
Justice Geoghegan concluded that the Tribunal could reasonably impose confidentiality on the circulated material, including the context in which public documents appeared. He said the evidence established serious leaks over a number of years and that they undermined the Tribunal’s work. The court held that an injunction could restrain publication where the newspaper knew the material was intended to remain confidential.
The Supreme Court set aside the High Court order and substituted the narrower injunction proposed during the appeal. The order does not bar publication of public documents themselves; it restricts disclosure of their inclusion in the Tribunal’s brief. The judgment addressed the injunction sought in these proceedings and did not determine what remedies a person who supplied material to the Tribunal might have if a separate confidentiality undertaking were breached.