The Belfast Telegraph has won an important High Court battle to allow the contents of a damaging report into the conduct of the vice-chancellor of one of Northern Ireland’s two universities to be made public.

The official report – about Professor Gerry McKenna – was compiled by a former Parliamentary Ombudsman and tackled damaging allegations against the academic.

Giving judgment, Mr Justice Higgins said: “The balance in this instance clearly falls in favour of freedom of speech, which outweighs the university’s right to confidentiality.”

The University of Ulster initially won an injunction to prevent the paper from publishing the Buckley report.

But a second attempt to have its contents revealed was successful in the Belfast High Court.

The legal drama began in April when reporter Claire Regan obtained a copy of the report. The university successfully applied for an injunction after she asked the university for a comment.

In court the university’s lawyers argued that the report was a confidential, preliminary document, that the investigation by the university’s ruling council was incomplete and that publication would prejudice the integrity of its ongoing discussions with the vice chancellor.

Granting an interim injunction preventing publication of the report or extracts, Mr Justice Higgins agreed to another hearing if evidence was produced that the report was not draft but in fact final.

At the end of May the university issued a press release saying Prof McKenna would relinquish his duties as vice chancellor and would concentrate on his role as president. An acting vice-chancellor was also appointed.

The new acting vice chancellor then wrote to his 3,500 staff disclosing a small part of the report.

Ironically, the Telegraph could not report that section because of the injunction. However, the letter did not disclose full details of allegations against Professor McKenna, made under the ‘whistle blowers’ charter.

The Telegraph wrote to Sir Richard, who confirmed that his draft report was indeed the final version and armed with this fresh evidence, backed by calls from public representatives and other bodies for the report to be made public, went back to court in a bid to have the injunction lifted.

But the university put forward a new block, arguing that it was still a confidential document and that publication would potentially have a ‘chilling’ effect on the making of such complaints in the future.

Patrick Lyttle, QC, for the Telegraph, said the paper would give an undertaking that the names of those interviewed by Sir Michael would not be published.

He told Mr Justice Higgins that the newspaper, which had a long history of responsible journalism, did not seek to print a “salacious story”.

The report did not touch on personal or private issues but concerned matters of public interest.

He said: “The matters being investigated are matters concerning good management and governance of the university. If that isn’t a matter of public interest I submit nothing could be.”

Discharging the injunction the Judge said the reasons for granting it in the first place no longer applied.

Jim Flanagan, deputy editor of the Telegraph, said the court’s decision upheld the paper’s right to publish information in the public interest.

He added: “Freedom of speech is the lynchpin of democracy and I think our decision to go to court has been fully vindicated.

“The university used public funds to commission this report and then incurred further expenditure attempting to keep its contents confidential.

“We simply wanted to place its findings in the public domain and let our readers make up their own minds about it.”