From 1 August 2018, the media will have access to documents
opened in an Irish court, or taken to have been opened in an Irish
court. This is a welcome development for the media and has been
implemented to facilitate the fair and accurate reporting of court
hearings. Parties should be aware that this potentially means that
documents filed in proceedings which might make reference to
commercially sensitive and/or confidential information may be
accessed by the media even if that content has not necessarily been
read out in court.
There has been no change to the rules on non-party access to
court documents.
OPENED IN COURT
If legal proceedings progress to hearing, or if there is an
interlocutory motion, certain documents will be opened in court
i.e., they will be read into the court record. The documents may
not necessarily be read word for word, beginning to end. A document
may be taken to have been opened in open court where, for example,
reference is made in
