The Supreme Court has reserved judgment on an appeal by the Morris tribunal against the High Court's quashing of the tribunal's order directing Labour Party TD Brendan Howlin to hand over documents he had received relating to allegations that certain gardaí may have acted with impropriety.
The tribunal was established to inquire into matters of public importance, including allegations contained in information received by Deputy Howlin on June 25th, 2000, that two senior gardaí acted with impropriety.
In February 2003, the tribunal made an order for the production of the information in Mr Howlin's possession. It claimed its work had been "gravely hampered" because of its inability to establish the identity of the information. The High Court later quashed the tribunal's order.
During submissions for Mr Howlin opposing the tribunal's appeal against that High Court decision, it was stated the clear object of the tribunal's discovery order was to require him to make disclosure of records of phone and fax numbers so the tribunal could ascertain the identity of the persons who communicated the information to him.
The discovery order required disclosure of private papers which were absolutely privileged and immune from production having regard to the provisions of Article 15.10 of the Constitution, it was argued.
Mr Howlin further contended that, even if for some reason he could not invoke Article 15.10 for that purpose, the tribunal had not properly applied the appropriate legal principles in considering whether to require disclosure of such documents by way of discovery.
In Mr Howlin's submissions, presented by Gerard Hogan SC, he contended the privilege conferred by Article 15.10 was absolute and could not, as the tribunal had held, be balanced against other considerations.
Article 15.12 dealt with the privilege status of official publications and utterances made in either House of the Oireachtas, while Article 15.13 provided that Oireachtas members shall not, "in respect of any utterance in either House, be amenable to any court or any authority other than the House itself". Article 15.10 must be seen as complementary.