Court dismisses appeal for public hearing and anonymisation due to belated application and laches.

AN CHÚIRT ACHOMHAIRC THE COURT OF APPEAL

APPROVED – NO REDACTION NEEDED

Court of Appeal Record Number: 2025/58 High Court Record Number: 2021/500 JR Neutral Citation Number: [2026] IECA 19

Whelan J. Pilkington J. Collins J.

BETWEEN/ BARTH O’NEILL

APPLICANT/APPELLANT

- AND -

THE REVENUE COMMISSIONERS

RESPONDENT

JUDGMENT of the Court delivered (ex tempore) on the 26th day of January 2026

COLLINS J.

I. Background to the Appeal

1. This is an appeal against the judgments of the High Court (Bradley J.) delivered on 31 May and 22 October 2024, and the order of 4 February 2025, as amended by order dated 24 February 2025, made pursuant thereto, by which the High Court refused the appellant’s applications for orders that proceedings entitled ‘The High Court 2021 500 JR between Barth O’Neill applicant and the Revenue Commissioners respondent’ (a) be heard otherwise than in public or in camera and (b) be anonymised.

2. On 31 May 2021 the appellant obtained leave of the High Court (O’Moore J.) to seek a number of reliefs by way of judicial review as against the respondent. The proceedings have their origin in a dispute surrounding the appellant’s capital gains tax return for 2007. That dispute was settled with the respondent on or about 13 June 2016. A subsequent dispute between the parties as to the terms of that agreement was compromised by a written agreement of 27 October 2020. Under these settlements, the respondent agreed to write out certain balances of income tax and capital gains tax as uncollectable.

3. On 23 November 2020, the appellant wrote to the respondent to the effect that his 2007 liabilities to income tax and capital gains tax ‘no longer exist’ and requested that the respondent’s records be updated to reflect that position. The respondent declined to accede to that request. On 9 December 2020, the appellant wrote an e-mail to the respondent in which he sought to have the data with respect to the said amounts deleted from the latter’s records in compliance with Art. 17 of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April

2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation).

4. By decision communicated by e-mail dated 22 February 2021, an official in the respondent’s Data Protection Unit responded to the appellant’s Art. 17 request by stating, for the reasons set out therein, that the information was part of the appellant’s tax record and would be treated as confidential taxpayer information and processed in accordance with the Tax Acts. She declined to accede to the appellant’s request. She further informed the appellant that, if he disagreed with that decision, he had the right to make a complaint to the Data Protection Commission. Further correspondence ensued prior to the application for leave to commence these judicial review proceedings.

5. The requisite originating Notice of Motion was duly issued and made returnable for 28 June 2021. On 10 November 2022, the appellant caused to have issued out of the Central Office of the High Court a Notice of Motion returnable for 5 December of that year in effect seeking judgment in default against the respondent. The appellant’s affidavit grounding that motion exhibits the considerable e-mail correspondence that was exchanged between the parties. It also avers that, whilst the matter had been listed for mention in the judicial review list, it had at some point in time fallen out of it, thus requiring that the parties reinstate it. On that same day, the appellant also caused to have a motion issued, returnable for the same date, seeking to have the proceedings anonymized using initials that did not relate to his name.

6. The respondent filed a Statement of Opposition on 1 December 2022, which, inter alia, pleaded that if the appellant had any legitimate grievance regarding the decision of 22 February 2021, he failed, refused and/or neglected to exercise the alternative statutory remedy of a complaint to the Data Protection Commission.

7. On 5 December 2022, the return date for the above motions, the proceedings were mentioned before the High Court (Meenan J.). Having heard the parties, the High Court ordered that the respondent had liberty to take up the transcript of the hearing of the application for leave. That order was the subject of an appeal to this Court (No 18 of 2023), which, after an exchange of written submissions, came on for hearing before Costello, Faherty, and Haughton JJ. on 27 March 2023.

8. On 8 May 2023, the High Court (Meenan J.) set a date in December 2023 for the hearing of the appellant’s motion to anonymise the proceedings. On 27 November 2023, the appellant caused to have a second motion issued out of the Central Office of the High Court, in which he purported to amend the notice of motion returnable for 5 December 2022 to include an order that the proceedings be held otherwise than in public, which is allowed for under s. 156 of the Data Protection Act 2018. These two motions ultimately came on for hearing before the High Court (Bradley J.) on 17 June 2024.

9. It follows from the foregoing that, having commenced proceedings in May 2021, the appellant brought motions, without leave of the High Court, seeking the anonymisation of the proceedings and that they be heard in camera in November 2022 and November 2023, respectively, i.e. seventeen and twenty-nine months after the date of the commencement of the proceedings.

II. Merits of the Appeal

10. The appellant seeks interlocutory relief in the context of judicial review proceedings. RSC Ord. 84, r. 20(8)(a) provides that, where leave to apply for judicial review is granted, the High Court, should it consider it just and convenient to do so, may on such terms as it thinks fit grant such interim relief as could be granted in an action begun by plenary summons. Before examining the merits of the application for interlocutory relief, the Court is, however, faced with the issue as to whether the appellant has, by his own conduct, disentitled himself from obtaining the relief he seeks. This primarily involves consideration of the delay in bringing on these applications for interlocutory relief.

11. Save in such circumstances as are provided by law, Justice in Ireland is administered in public. The onus lies on an applicant who seeks to obtain an order seeking the disapplication of that principle in his circumstances to demonstrate that he is entitled to it. The nature of the relief sought here seeks to prevent the public from having knowledge of the appellant’s affairs by way of the hearing of the substantive proceedings. Those proceedings are in being since May 2021, i.e. over four and a half years, during which time the interest that the appellant now asserts in their anonymisation has not occurred. At all stages, including the hearing of this appeal, the proceedings have been conducted in public. In particular, the High Court has delivered two written judgments in this matter. The status quo is thus that these proceedings are and have been conducted in public.

12. The appellant moved the High Court some 17 and 29 months after the date of the commencement of the proceedings to have them anonymised/conducted in camera. No good reason, within the meaning of the case-law governing the extension of time in judicial review proceedings which both explains and excuses those delays, has been forthcoming from the appellant. The Court thus has the difficulty that there is no evidence before it upon which it might exercise its discretion to extend the time within which to make those applications.

13. By his own failure to proceed with the expedition that is required in order to protect the interest that he seeks to assert, the appellant has, in my opinion, lost any right to the relief he seeks in this appeal. In that regard, his conduct stands in sharp contrast with the applicants in Doe v. Revenue Commissioners [2008] 3 IR 328, where they sought to protect their anonymity by applying to the High Court prior to the commencement of the proceedings, and in G. v. DPP [2023] IEHC 134, where the issue was raised at the leave stage in the judicial review proceedings and renewed shortly thereafter. Delays of 17 and 29 months in asserting a right for proceedings not to be conducted in public also have the consequence of rendering any order that the High Court might have made, and certainly one that this Court might make at this stage, an exercise in futility. So far as the appellant is concerned in these proceedings, the genie is well and truly out of the bottle. Finally, a further consideration to be taken into account in weighing up the merits of entertaining this application is the public interest in the efficient administration of justice, which has not been served by the tardy commencement and prosecution of these motions.

III. Conclusion

14. For these reasons, I propose to dismiss this appeal and to affirm the order of the High Court.

WHELAN J.

15. I have listened carefully to the judgment delivered by Collins J. I am in entire agreement with same. I would just merely add that it is quite extraordinary that the issue of privacy and anonymisation and so forth was not raised at the very outset in these proceedings, in the context of the prior history of dealings between the parties and in particular the litigation history that subsisted between the parties. We need only consider the determination of the Supreme Court on 10 February 2016 ([2016] IESCDET 9), all of 10 years ago now virtually, which goes into very significant detail with regard to the course of dealings between the parties and the various issues and which to a very extensive extent engages with issues which it is now contended are required to be anonymised.

16. Furthermore, it is surprising that the issue was not raised at the outset. As was pointed out by Collins J. in decisions such as Doe the issue was raised at the outset or prior to the very institution of the proceedings, so that a proper consideration could be given, and so that interests that were being asserted could be properly evaluated.

17. In this instance, having regard to the fact that what is sought is interlocutory relief within the meaning of RSC Ord. 84 r. 20(8)(a), it is important to bear in mind that merely because the Statute of Limitations 1957 does not apply, it does not mean that a litigant is at large to bring the application at any old time they deem fit. Given the nature of the application, an interlocutory application is governed by principles such as laches, and laches requires that if there is a delay above and beyond something that is absolutely necessary, then the moving party must satisfy the Court as to the causes and justifications for the delay. No justification whatsoever has been articulated by the appellant as to why he delayed in seeking the orders he very belatedly sought in the two notices of motion at any time between May of 2021, and December of 2022 and December of 2023. That is a most troubling state of affairs, and most misfortunate in the circumstances. Particularly since the matter was, in fact, before the High Court, before Meenan J. in the month of December 2023 and thereafter has been the subject of an appeal. Both of those matters were heard in open court, as were other applications pertaining to this matter heard in open court in the intervening time.

18. Furthermore, such conduct quite separately potentially amounts in my view, given the extensive duration of it, to an acquiescence on the part of the appellant and is conduct that is equivalent to a waiver of any entitlements he might have had. I merely add them in.

19. I am in full agreement with all of the points raised by Collins J. in his judgment. For all those reasons, in my view the appeal is not viable, not maintainable.

PILKINGTON J.

20. I have listened carefully to the judgments of Collins and Whelan JJ. I agree with their respective distillation of all of the issues within this appeal and indeed the orders that are proposed in dismissing this appeal.

Appearances:

The Appellant appeared in person

For the Respondent: Eoin Clifford SC and David Quinn, instructed by the Revenue Solicitors