A DECISION of the Supreme Court yesterday in an application from businessman Denis O’Brien opens the way for the publication of the Moriarty tribunal’s second and final report, legal sources have said.
The court refused an application by lawyers for Mr O’Brien that an appeal he is taking in a case against the tribunal be put on the court’s priority list.
The appeal against the decision of the High Court in a case the businessman took against the tribunal will now have to go on to the Supreme Court’s normal list and could take some years to come to hearing.
The case concerns the tribunal’s decision to restrict Mr O’Brien’s right to question a Dutch consultant who played a central role in the 1995 mobile phone licence competition, which was won by Mr O’Brien’s Esat Digifone.
Michael Andersen, in evidence to the tribunal in October 2010, said he believed the tribunal had a bias against Esat and that its confidential preliminary findings in relation to the competition were a “culmination” of this bias.
The decision of the Supreme Court means that the appeal may not be heard for years. Legal sources said the tribunal is unlikely to consider itself bound to await the outcome of the appeal and so is now clear to publish its findings.
If the case had been put on the priority list, the tribunal might have felt obliged to refrain from publishing the report pending the outcome of the case.
In rejecting Mr O’Brien’s application yesterday, the Chief Justice, Mr Justice John Murray, said the Irish Supreme Court was probably the least well resourced in the western world.
The decision by the court follows the recent publication of correspondence between Mr Justice Moriarty and Taoiseach Brian Cowen, where the tribunal chairman indicated that the services of the most senior barrister working for the tribunal “should forthwith be substantially reduced” as the tribunal’s work was nearing completion. The Moriarty (payments to politicians) tribunal was established in 1997 and published its first report in December 2006.
The tribunal issued confidential preliminary findings relating to its second report to interested parties in November 2008 but has since then held hearings where new evidence was heard that called into question some of the findings.