The High Court has rejected Keith Harrison’s application to quash two interim reports of the Disclosures Tribunal, finding that he had not established objective bias by its chairman, Peter Charleton.
Harrison sought judicial review of the tribunal’s second and third interim reports, which criticised him. His case was that Charleton’s earlier work as lead counsel to the Morris Tribunal, and his public praise there of Chief Superintendent Terry McGinn, gave rise to a reasonable apprehension that Harrison would not receive a fair hearing. Harrison did not allege actual bias.
McGinn had served as Garda liaison officer to the Morris Tribunal from 2002 until her promotion in 2005. The tribunal’s office manager described her role as a channel for requests for documents and other assistance, generally handled through the legal teams’ solicitors. He said direct contact between McGinn and Charleton was rare and professional. The court accepted that evidence, including that they worked in separate offices and on different floors.
Harrison also relied on a 2006 clarification Charleton made in open session after an edited radio reconstruction had, he said, left a misleading impression about McGinn’s response to a Garda who wanted to tell the truth. Charleton said the Morris Tribunal team respected her assistance and that the full transcript showed she had been helpful. The High Court found the clarification arose after a request from the Garda Commissioner’s legal team, with the tribunal chairman’s knowledge and approval. It concerned McGinn’s specific liaison work and was not a general assessment of her truthfulness.
The court held that a reasonable, informed observer would not regard the earlier professional contact or the clarification, made more than 11 years before the Disclosures Tribunal began, as creating a reasonable apprehension of bias. It also found that Harrison had not shown that assessing McGinn’s evidence was central to the issue the tribunal had to decide: contacts between Garda members and Tusla concerning him.
The judge stressed that the interim reports were evidence that the tribunal had made findings, not proof that those findings were true. The court did not determine the underlying allegations about Garda conduct. It rejected the application for judicial review and refused the reliefs sought.