Discovery ordered in contractual dispute over the acquisition of a financial services company

Practice and procedure - discovery - discovery sought by plaintiff - defendant opposes discovery - defendant argues that because issue was only pleaded in the Reply to Defence - rather than in Statement of Claim - that the issue is not a factor for this Court to take into account in determining the discovery - plaintiff suing defendants for €20M - argues owed as balance for purchase price of group - sold under share purchase agreement - will be question of contractual interpretation - plaintiff seeking two categories - 1(a) is copies of all regulatory capital returns filed by the Group in respect of 2022 - 1(b) is documents evidencing or recording 2022 Capital Requirement Reduction Amount or the Consolidated Capital Resources Requirement - category 2 is documents evidencing or discussing capital resource requirements or the Group's regulatory capital returns - court cites phrase "relevance is determined on the basis of the pleadings and not the evidence" - category 1 mostly agreed between parties but disagreement as to temporal limit - court refuses to apply temporal limit - given it will exclude relevant documents - court analyses pleadings in detail category 2 - consideration relevance to discovery of a plaintiff’s plea which is not in the Statement of Claim - court disagrees - relevance in the context of a discovery request, ‘is determined on the basis of the pleadings’ is clear and unqualified - court finds category 2 is relevant - court further finds category is not disproportionate - discovery granted.