The High Court has ruled that a redacted version of the first report of the inspectors investigating Independent News and Media can be disclosed to the company, the Central Bank and other applicants, including the former INM chairman, Leslie Buckley.
The inspectors were appointed by the High Court President, Mr Justice Peter Kelly, and provided their first interim report to him last April.
Only the Director of Corporate Enforcement has a statutory entitlement to see the first report but the court has discretion as to whether anyone else can access it.
A number of interested parties made applications to the court for access.
These applications were opposed by the ODCE, supported by the inspectors, Sean Gillane and Robert Fleck.
They objected to the applicants being given access at this stage, primarily because the report refers to evidential matters.
Mr Justice Kelly ruled that only those parts of the report which do not deal with such matters should be provided at this stage.
A "good deal" of the report deals with evidential matters, he said. He added that he had reached this conclusion because the inspectors had given guarantees of confidentiality to various people and he was anxious the court should not take any step that might hinder the inspectors' work.
The judge said the report was essentially a progress report and did not contain any findings of fact, but it did contain a lot of direct and indirect reference to evidential material.
The decision means the applicants will get access to 29 paragraphs of the report, which he indicated contained at least 79 paragraphs.
Among those seeking access were INM, Mr Buckley, the former INM CEO, Robert Pitt, the former CEO of INM's Irish division, Vincent Crowley, journalist Maeve Sheehan and a number of companies and individuals whom the ODCE was concerned may have been involved in the removal and interrogation of data from INM in 2014.
The judge said that data appeared to have been searched against the names of 19 individuals including journalists and two senior counsel to the Moriarty Tribunal.
He said "grave concerns" had been expressed about the lawfulness of that. Justice Kelly said the lawfulness of this whole operation was "very questionable".
