Dunnes Stores yesterday secured a High Court order preventing Mr Gerard Ryan from acting as authorised officer to two of its companies - Dunnes Stores (Ireland) Company and Dunnes Stores (ILAC Centre) Limited. At a late sitting before Mr Justice Budd, Mr Adrian Hardiman SC, for Dunnes, was also given leave to seek an order quashing the decision of Tanaiste and Minister for Enterprise and Employment, Ms Mary Harney, to appoint Mr Ryan.

He granted leave to the company to seek an order of prohibition preventing Mr Ryan from acting as authorised officer and said that would act as a stay on Mr Ryan's investigation until further order of the court.

Because of the implications of his decision, the judge said he would give the Minister liberty to apply to the court regarding the matter at 24 hours notice. He said he wanted the matter back in court as soon as possible and returned it to Monday next.

In his application, Mr Hardiman raised the Supreme Court decision, delivered just hours earlier, dismissing an appeal by the employees of NIB against a decision that they must answer questions put to them by the inspectors, but adding that only voluntary confessions would be admissible in any subsequent criminal proceedings.

Mr Hardiman said the decision meant an involuntary statement could not be admitted as evidence in a trial. Dunnes was now seeking the same relief in the present proceedings.

The two companies and Mrs Margaret Heffernan, of Dunnes, were given leave to seek a declaration that Section 19 (6) of the Companies Act 1990 did not permit the use of statements made by a person in evidence in any criminal prosecution against that person.

They also secured leave to seek a declaration that no information, book or document obtained by Mr Ryan may be given to any person except under Section 21 of the Companies Act.

This Section deals with security of information. It provides that information about a company obtained in an investigation cannot be disclosed without the permission of the company, except to a competent authority (the Minister or a court) unless disclosure is required in particular circumstances relating to criminal proceedings under Act, reports by inspectors appointed under the Act or proceedings to wind up the company or to obtain a search warrant.

Mr Justice Budd asked if the Tanaiste had to get the permission of Dunnes before releasing such information. Mr Hardiman said that was very much their case.

Mr Hardiman said Dunnes may not be right in its "darkest suspicion" that the Department was leaking information. But someone was leaking it and that information was to be found in published newspaper reports in recent weeks.

His clients had fully co-operated with no less than seven investigations, three of them judicial inquiries. But they were not going to co-operate further with the Minister in the latest investigation unless forced to do so.

What was being sought by this latest inquiry was the examination of no less than 120,000 documents since the incorporation of the company, counsel said.

The Ryan inquiry involved asking for some of the material already furnished in the past, he said. The only documentation not furnished was the Price Waterhouse report for which the company claimed privilege. That privilege had not been challenged by the Department.

Dunnes yesterday claimed that Mr Ryan and the Tanaiste had failed to "indicate the ambit of their inquiry adequately".

They also allege that an inquiry is being undertaken which is "disproportionate and excessive in its ambit and is unsupported by any facts or any adequate facts as would justify an inquiry of such breath and expense".

Last November, Ms Justice Laffoy in the High Court rejected an application by Dunnes for an Order quashing a decision of Ms Harney purporting to appoint an authorised officer to examine the books and records of the two dunnes Companies.

But the Judge declared that Ms Harney was obliged to give reasons to Dunnes for the appointment and directed an affidavit be prepared setting out those reasons.

In December Ms Justice Laffoy said Mr Ryan was entitled to act on foot of his appointment after January 4th. She was told on that occasion that an affidavit setting out reasons for Mr Ryan's appointment had been lodged with the High Court chief registrar as directed.