The tribunal of inquiry into payments made to Mr Charles Haughey and Mr Michael Lowry would not be a witch-hunt or a fudge, the chairman, Mr Justice Moriarty, said in his opening remarks yesterday.
The tribunal was sitting at Dublin Castle for the first time "to hear applications from any person seeking authorisation to be represented before the Tribunal pursuant to Section 2 (b) of the Tribunal of Inquiry (Evidence) Act 1921". Oral hearings are unlikely to be until after Christmas.
Mr Justice Moriarty said the tribunal's purpose would be to inquire diligently and fairly and accurately, and to report as promptly as possible.
It would be "excessively optimistic", he said, to expect to start the proceedings before Christmas because of the investigative period which would be required.
"I reserve the right to make a start at some stage in December, but the probability is, upon conclusion of the investigations by the tribunal, that it will be at a date in early or mid-January, according with the start of that legal term," he said.
No application was made for legal representation for Mr Haughey but Mr Lowry was granted limited representation on the application of his counsel, Mr Donal O'Donnell SC, with Mr David Barniville, barrister.
General representation was granted to the Revenue Commissioners on the application of their counsel, Mr James Connolly SC and Mr Pat Quinn, instructed by Ms Frances Cooke, solicitor.
As part of the inquiry into the Revenue Commissioners, they are being examined on whether they "availed fully, properly and in a timely manner in exercising the powers available to them in collecting or seeking to collect the taxation due by Mr Michael Lowry and Mr Charles Haughey".
Limited representation was also granted to Mr Padraig Collery, who handled memorandum accounts relating to the Ansbacher deposits, on the application of Mr Roderick Murphy SC with Mr Noel Devitt, barrister, and to the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ireland, on the application of Mr Ian Finlay SC, instructed by Matheson, Ormsby and Prentice, solicitors.
Mr Finlay said the institute would possibly be of assistance in the area of any recommendations on company law reform.
Ms Patricia Casey, a solicitor for the Attorney General, said he had not yet decided on how best the public interest should be served, but was reserving the right to make an application.
Mr Justice Moriarty said the tribunal had all the powers of a court of law as regards evidential or other procedural matters.
He fully appreciated that parties might have concerns regarding issues of personal or commercial confidentiality, and he was proposing to adopt the system of submitting evidence in confidential documents as established in the McCracken tribunal.
He said that while he could not speculate on the likely duration of the plenary sessions of the tribunal, he was only too conscious that protracted hearings could easily lose public confidence.
He was extremely anxious that the business would be conducted in as expeditious and effective a manner as possible and he would be disappointed if it was not possible "to conclude fully our business before certainly the conclusion of the current legal year". The current legal year ends in October 1998, but effectively when the courts rise for the summer at the end of July.
The tribunal team has not yet decided on a specific strategy to be used in its quest to find out what monies were paid to Mr Haughey and Mr Lowry while they were in office, and whether any decisions made by them benefited those who paid such money, according to sources.
Judge Moriarty said yesterday that the tribunal was to write to Oireachtas members and to the principal finance houses in the State seeking information. The tribunal team has spent almost two weeks conducting investigations, he said, and there was "a considerable amount of documentary and other work to be done".
However, the tribunal team has considerably less information to begin working on than its predecessor. Mr Ben Dunne co-operated fully with that tribunal, giving it an enormous volume of information and material that ultimately led to its success in proving that Mr Haughey received £1.3 million from Mr Dunne.
Mr Justice Moriarty said once oral hearings began, "the vast proportion of evidence will be led by counsel on behalf of the tribunal". The hope is that the investigations between now and then will have produced a considerable body of evidence that can then be "led" in public by counsel for the tribunal.