High Court rules it has jurisdiction to jail Lawlor

The High Court has ruled it has jurisdiction to jail Liam Lawlor for his alleged non-compliance with the Flood tribunal.

Liam Lawlor

Lawlor's legal team have appealed Mr Justice Thomas Smyth's decision to the Supreme Court, where it will be heard tomorrow morning.

Mr Justice Smyth said he had made his decision for a number of reasons, including the ruling of the Chief Justice, Mr Justice Keane, in December last year which deemed Lawlor's jail sentence and £5,000 fine were "appropriate".

He also received support for his ruling during consultation with the President of the High Court Mr Justice Joseph Finnegan at lunchtime today.

In granting leave to appeal, he warned there had been precedents where the Supreme Court had ordered the High Court to "get on with the job".

"That is what I am disposed to doing," he added.

Lawlor was sentenced to three months in prison for a failure to comply with an order made in October, 2000 for discovery of documents. The High Court found Lawlor in contempt last July, but suspended the sentence to November 23rd, 2001.

Counsel for Lawlor argued this morning that this prison sentence had now expired. He said tribunal lawyers should have sought an extension of the limit before last November, but had not done so.

Therefore, the court now had no right to jail him for his alleged ongoing failure to produce financial records as demanded by the tribunal.

Mr John Trainor SC for Lawlor claimed the tribunal would have to lodge a new motion of complaint over his client if it wished to proceed with the order to jail him.

"This is simply not a proper procedure and must end," he told Mr Justice Smyth.

However, Mr Frank Clarke SC for the tribunal told the court the sentence, which he described as Lawlor's "sword of Damocles", remained suspended and was open to being reimposed. He rejected the contention that it had lapsed.

The original prison term applied to a failure by the Dublin West TD to produce satisfactory documentation to the tribunal, a situation which was ongoing, he said.

"This is not a stand-alone set of proceedings, but a consideration of whether the previous ruling has been complied with," he said.

The TD, who served one week of the suspended sentence in Mountjoy earlier this month, was present in court for the proceedings.