Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 13 December 2016
117. Deputy Peadar Tóibín asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality if her Department has been involved in any court proceeding that involved non-disclosure agreements in the past five years; and if so, if the specific court ruling prevented knowledge of the court proceeding being known and knowledge of the participants to the court proceeding from being made known for each of these agreements. [39871/16]
View answerThe Chief State Solicitors Office (CSSO) may, in appropriate cases, enter settlement agreements with the legal representatives of individuals who have applied for a Judicial Review of an executive decision. Such a letter will propose terms of settlement and will generally include a clause setting out that the applicant and their legal representatives will, as part of the agreement, jointly agree not to disclose or reveal the contents of the settlement. This is a routine practice in litigation, not unique to this jurisdiction and such settlements are agreed between the CSSO and various solicitors representing applicants on a case by case basis. These agreements relate to legal representatives of private individuals and many of these individuals may have at some stage applied for asylum or protection status in the State. I would therefore not be in a position to disclose the details of such individual cases. Indeed, as the Deputy may be aware, in cases brought by a person seeking asylum, the Court withholds the identity of the applicants from its published judgment in order to protect their confidentiality.
In addition, in circumstances where the State is defending proceedings involving claims for damages, it is commonplace for legal proceedings to be settled on the basis of confidentiality being maintained by way of agreement between the parties in relation to the terms of any settlement. Once a confidentiality clause becomes part of a settlement, it is commonplace that these proceedings are then struck out either with /without an Order, in accordance with the agreement between the parties.
It should be noted that my Department seeks to ensure that feedback from court cases and/or judgments is conveyed to the relevant policy or operation division in order to have any lessons learned applied to processes or policy.
