The Court of Appeal declared that conclusions in a 2014 report critical of Alan Shatter, when he was Minister for Justice and Equality, were reached in breach of fair procedures and constitutional and natural justice. It also awarded him costs of the High Court and appeal proceedings.
In a supplemental judgment delivered on 2 March 2017, Ms Justice Finlay Geoghegan said Shatter was entitled to the declaration, and there had been no objection to making it in light of the court’s earlier judgments. The judgment was to be read with the judgments delivered on 10 November 2016 by her, the President and Ms Justice Irvine.
Shatter had also sought an order quashing the adverse conclusions in Sean Guerin’s report, an order requiring Guerin to provide the perfected court order to the Taoiseach, and an order requiring Guerin to delete the conclusions from the report and provide an amended version to the Taoiseach.
The court refused those further orders. It said delivery of the court order to the Taoiseach was unnecessary because the order would be public and Shatter could deliver it once perfected. The judge declined to decide whether the court had jurisdiction to quash or require changes to the report. She said that, even if it had jurisdiction, the court should not exercise that power in these proceedings.
The case had been brought against Guerin alone. The report had been delivered to the Taoiseach on behalf of the Government and was no longer under Guerin’s control. The Government had published it by laying it before the Oireachtas and established a Commission of Investigation based on its advice. Shatter had participated in that commission, which the judgment said provided full fair procedures before it reached conclusions on matters covered by its terms of reference.
The judge said some challenged passages were parts of sentences or did not reproduce the report’s actual wording, so removing them could require rewriting paragraphs. Shatter had also argued that vindicating his good name required the adverse conclusions not to remain publicly available. The court made no order on continuing publication or public records, saying the Government or whoever controlled them had not been heard. Any dispute with those parties would raise different issues and require new proceedings, ordinarily first decided by a trial court.