The High Court has overturned a decision requiring the Taoiseach to release a handwritten note of a 2003 Government meeting that discussed greenhouse gas emissions.
In a judgment delivered on 4 June 2010, Mr Justice O’Neill allowed the appeal brought by An Taoiseach against a decision of the Commissioner for Environmental Information. The court held that the Commissioner had exceeded her legal powers by deciding that an EU environmental information directive allowed her to set aside Irish rules protecting Cabinet discussions.
The request was made by notice party Gary Fitzgerald, who sought records of Government decisions and discussions on Ireland’s greenhouse gas emissions between 2002 and 2007. The Department of An Taoiseach initially identified 26 records within the scope of the request. It released eight and withheld 18. The Commissioner later confined her decision to one record: a handwritten note of discussions and their outcome at a Government meeting on 24 June 2003.
The Commissioner found that the request concerned emissions information and that the EU directive prevented refusal on confidentiality grounds in those circumstances. She directed disclosure of the record. The Taoiseach appealed, arguing that the Commissioner could not determine whether the Irish regulations were consistent with the directive or disapply domestic law.
The High Court treated the statutory appeal as a full rehearing of the legal issues. It ruled that the regulations gave the Commissioner no authority to assess their compatibility with the directive or to disapply either the regulations’ Government-discussion provision or Article 28.4.3 of the Constitution. The court said such questions were for a court of law.
The judge also considered whether Government meetings fell within the rules on confidential proceedings of public authorities or the separate exception for internal communications. He concluded that the regulations dealt with Cabinet confidentiality through Article 8(b), alongside Article 10(2), and that the directive classified discussions at Government meetings as internal communications. In his view, those provisions did not conflict with the directive.
The court allowed the appeal and set aside the Commissioner’s determination. It declared that Article 8(b) alone applied under the regulations to discussions at Government meetings, and that those discussions were internal communications for the purposes of the directive. The judgment did not direct release of the note. The court also refused the Commissioner’s application to refer questions to the European Court of Justice.