Judge reveals why he refused to allow tax case anonymity

A High Court judge gave detailed reasons yesterday for his decision last month that a man and woman were not entitled to anonymity when they brought a court application to restrain their names being published by the Revenue in a list of tax defaulters.

The applicants, one of whom has since been named as orthopaedic consultant Brian Hurson, of Nutley Avenue, Dublin, had initiated proceedings seeking to restrain the Revenue Commissioners from publishing details of a €1.1 settlement.

The action did not proceed when Mr Justice Frank Clarke ruled the court had no jurisdiction to permit proceedings such as those intended by the plaintiffs to be conducted on any anonymous basis.

Giving his reasons for that finding yesterday, the judge said he was not satisfied that any entitlement to confidentiality concerning their tax affairs that the plaintiffs might assert could be of sufficient weight to countervail, even to a limited extent, the constitutional imperative that justice be administered in public.

Nor was he satisfied that a requirement that the proceedings be brought in the actual names of the plaintiffs amounted to an infringement of their right of access to the courts, the judge said.

The fact the plaintiffs might be discouraged from bringing proceedings if they could not do so anonymously was not a sufficient reason to give rise to a jurisdiction to permit the proceedings to be brought anonymously, he said.

The fact that some of the purpose of the proceedings might be lost in practice was also not a sufficient factor to give rise to a constitutional jurisdiction to permit the proceedings to be brought anonymously, he said.

For those reasons, the judge said he would not permit the plaintiffs to bring the case except in the normal way, by using their own names. Having so ruled, he noted the plaintiffs had decided not to press ahead with the substantive action.

In his 24-page judgment, Mr Justice Clarke also said it was important to note the settlement reached between the plaintiffs' taxation advisers and the Revenue did include a significant sum in respect of a penalty.

The particulars of the manner in which the settlement of €1,136,685 was calculated were not in dispute, he said. The settlement was under a Revenue scheme enabling persons to make a qualifying disclosure of under-declared liabilities in the case of holders of offshore assets.