Analysis: Viewing the reports before they were handed over was an unusual practice, writes Colm Keena.

The judgment in the lengthy Fyffes/DCC insider dealing case was delivered in December last, a year after the case opened.

In January of last year this newspaper reported on a related case involving access to documents, during which a number of confidential DCC memos were disclosed in court. The memos raised questions about the response of the Irish Stock Exchange to an operation put in place by DCC to influence the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).

Because the Fyffes/DCC case was ongoing, the exchange was advised that it could not comment. With the judgment in the case now issued by Ms Justice Mary Laffoy, the exchange has come out with a detailed response.

The memos raised a number of issues. One was that the chief executive of the exchange, Tom Healy, may have at one stage suggested he would vet reports produced by DCC, and only forward to the DPP those which he thought helped DCC's case.

Another issue was that information seemed to be flowing from the exchange, which was the regulator, to DCC, concerning the thinking of the DPP and the Garda.

Another was the view of DCC's advisers that "given the personalities and the vested interests involved, it seems likely DCC might make greater progress with the [ exchange] board than with the executive."

Lastly, the memos included ones written by DCC chief executive Jim Flavin and recorded conversations with Brian Davy, deputy chairman of the exchange and chairman of Davy stockbrokers. In the conversations Mr Davy told Mr Flavin about conversations he'd had with Mr Healy.

Mr Healy says the exchange was approached by DCC and wanted it to look at expert reports it had commissioned. Mr Healy said he and the exchange advised that DCC should forward these directly to the DPP, but DCC did not want to do this. Mr Healy said he was not clear why this was the case.

He says he did indeed discuss the intense confidentiality concerns which DCC had at the time, but refutes any suggestion he might have offered to vet the reports. He said this would run against the fact that the exchange had earlier filed a report to the DPP, which in turn led to the Garda inquiry.

He and his colleague, Brian Healy, director of trading and regulation at the stock exchange, questioned the accuracy of some of the memos and said it was not the case that they conveyed information to DCC that should not have been conveyed.

He says the board never played any role in the affair and Mr Davy's role was as an adviser to DCC rather than as a member of the board of the exchange.

All of this is true but it remains the case that DCC did succeed in having the exchange study the expert reports it had commissioned, before it handed those reports over to the exchange. In the period between these two events, DCC sought to ascertain the response of the exchange to the documents.

Mr Healy viewed the documents in March 2002 and they were handed over in July 2002. In the meantime Mr Davy had his conversations with Mr Healy.

The memos record Mr Healy seemingly encouraging DCC to forward the documents, assuring DCC it would be in their interest. Mr Healy says if the situation had been as black and white, as might be believed from the memos, then it would not have taken DCC so long before it forwarded the documents to the exchange for conveyance to the DPP.

He says he merely expressed the view that the reports would be helpful as they were expert reports that supported the DCC case. He says he said nothing about how the reports affected the view of the exchange.

The Supreme Court has said DCC was within its rights to make its case to the stock exchange, given that the exchange had forwarded its report to the DPP without giving DCC a fair chance to respond beforehand. It also said the exchange was correct, afterwards, to receive new material from DCC. But the agreement of the exchange to study the reports, before gaining possession of them, still seems odd.