Inquiry chief to report on work progress

The chairman of the Moriarty tribunal is to outline how much longer he believes it will take for the inquiry to finish hearing evidence when sittings resume on Wednesday next.

A High Court ruling in July, in a case brought by a witness being called before the Mahon tribunal, is among a number of factors that have delayed the resumption of the Moriarty tribunal's public hearings.

Because of the ruling, the Moriarty tribunal has had to consider distributing extra documentation to witnesses and interested parties.

"It may . . . be necessary to make a sizeable amount of further documentation available to a number of individuals," the tribunal said of the ruling in a note on its website.

The tribunal last sat on March 2nd, when it was thought to be near the end of its lengthy series of public sittings involving evidence concerning the awarding of the State's second mobile phone licence to Esat Digifone in 1996.

When it broke for the Easter recess, many of those involved felt the tribunal would resume shortly after that break and would finish its inquiry into the licence issue by the summer.

However, it did not resume hearings as expected immediately after Easter. It did announce in the second week of July that it would resume hearings on July 14th, a short period before the summer recesss.

That sitting did not occur and no reason was given other than that the chairman "in the interests of fair procedures had been considering a number of matters which might have resulted in a short delay to the recommencement of the sittings".

The website also mentioned the High Court ruling and the obligations it has created for the distribution of extra documentation to interested parties and to allow those parties review any such documentation.

On July 7th, Mr Justice O'Neill, in the High Court, issued a judgment in a case taken by property developer Mr Owen O'Callaghan.

Mr O'Callaghan said the refusal of the Mahon tribunal to grant him access to certain confidential documents held by the tribunal prior to his counsel's cross-examination of witness Mr Tom Gilmartin, was a breach of Mr O'Callaghan's constitutional rights.

The documents at issue concerned prior written and oral statements made in private by Mr Gilmartin to the tribunal. The tribunal had refused the documents on the grounds that they were confidential and that the tribunal had to be able to receive information in confidence and to uphold commitments to confidentiality it might make.

However, Mr Justice O'Neill said that when a tribunal decides that it will move from private investigation to public inquiry, the public interest requires that there is a full public exposure of all admissible, relevant evidence.

Not to permit disclosure of the documents would be a breach of the constitutional right to fair procedures of a person against whom "damaging allegations" have been made. The principle now applies to all tribunals.

The Moriarty tribunal was established in 1997 and is investigating payments to Mr Charles Haughey and Mr Michael Lowry.