The prospect of litigation does not bode well for an inquiry due to close by 2007, writes Paul Cullen.
At the very least, yesterday's Supreme Court reverse for the planning tribunal will cause considerable delay in its work, starting with the postponement of hearings into the controversial rezoning of Quarryvale, due to start next week.
For, before the tribunal plunges into that investigation - centred on allegations by former Government press secretary Frank Dunlop that county councillors were bribed to give the go-ahead to a massive shopping centre - it may now have to revisit earlier hearings into Quarryvale.
The decision is also a blow to the credibility of property developer Tom Gilmartin, who made a number of unexpected and unsubstantiated allegations against rival developer Owen O'Callaghan during his evidence. His claim that Mr O'Callaghan influenced the line of the Jack Lynch tunnel in Cork was easily disproved, for example, but Mr O'Callaghan felt the damage had been done and went to court.
Now Mr Gilmartin, who has had heart surgery in the meantime, will be recalled to the witness box, where he is likely to face intense questioning from Mr O'Callaghan's lawyers about the contradictions between various accounts of his allegations he has given to the media and to the tribunal.
This might only be the start of it, however. Others who have come under the tribunal spotlight will take heart from yesterday's judgment.
Some are likely to exploit it both at the inquiry and in their own court proceedings. If Mr O'Callaghan can win the right to access confidential tribunal documents such as witness statements and interviews, they will argue, why can't I?
Among those happiest at yesterday's decision will be former Fianna Fáil TD Liam Lawlor, who has already given notice of his intention to pursue legal proceedings against the tribunal. Mr Lawlor, who features in virtually every current line of inquiry, sees himself engaged in a one-man battle against the tribunal, at the end of which only one side will remain standing.
In the O'Callaghan case, the courts found in favour of the developer because his constitutional rights had been infringed. It may be that the tribunal will be able to limit the damage caused by this judgment by arguing in other cases that no constitutional rights had been infringed and that, therefore, no new right to disclosure of documents arises.
Yet even the threat of litigation by wealthy individuals does not bode well for the health of an inquiry that is already supposed to be shutting down by spring 2007. The tribunal has always had problems with the speed of its investigations, but these have never been worse than at present. The current module, on a land deal at Coolamber in west Dublin, does not involve any allegation of wrongdoing and is actually an off-shoot of an earlier module; in fact, it is one of five land deals the tribunal intends to scrutinise, mainly because of Mr Lawlor's involvement in all of them.
This is bad enough, but the real doomsday scenario for the inquiry would come from a successful challenge to its earlier findings of corruption, set out in Mr Justice Feargus Flood's 2002 report.
Joseph Murphy jnr, who figured in that report as having participated in a corrupt payment to Ray Burke, failed in the courts in proceedings similar to those taken by Mr O'Callaghan (ie to obtain confidential tribunal documents involving their respective accusers).
He is already taking legal action aimed at overturning those findings, so this latest development will be grist to his mill.
Whatever happens, the fact that the Supreme Court has so comprehensively rejected the inquiry's case is a sure sign that the tide is going out on tribunal culture.