Judge to rule on Denis O’Brien’s case over Dáil statements

A High Court judge will rule on Friday on Denis O'Brien's action over statements made in the Dáil about his banking affairs.

Mr O’Brien’s case, brought against the Clerk of the Dáil and the State, ran for almost seven days before concluding last December. Legal costs are expected to exceed €1 million, and liability for those will be decided after judgment is delivered.

Ms Justice Una Ní Raifeartaigh had deferred her judgment until after the High Court ruled on a separate case of former Rehab chief executive Angela Kerins, brought over the conduct of two Dáil Public Account Committee hearings in 2014 concerning payments of public monies to Rehab.

A three-judge High Court this year dismissed Ms Kerins’s case, which raised some similar issues relating to the privilege attached to “utterances” in the Oireachtas.

In his action Mr O’Brien has alleged Social Democrats TD Catherine Murphy and Sinn Féin TD Pearse Doherty “clearly disregarded” the constitutional separation of powers between parliament and the courts when they respectively made statements in the Dáil in May and June 2015.

He claimed the statements, made when he had ongoing High Court proceedings against RTÉ seeking to restrain it publishing details of his banking relationship with State-owned Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, amounted to “unwarranted interference” in the judicial domain.

He also argued that the Dáil Committee on Procedure and Privileges, which rejected his complaints over the statements, failed to “properly police” the TDs over their statements.

The respondents’ core argument is that the court, as a result of article 15 of the Constitution, has no jurisdiction to intervene.