A leading barrister and wife of the British Prime Minister, Ms Cherie Booth QC, will be made an honorary bencher of the King's Inns tomorrow. The King's Inns is the institution which trains barristers in Ireland.
The honour is the equivalent of a university fellowship. Recipients are chosen by existing benchers. It carries the privileges of access to the institution's resources such as its library and dining facilities. However, few of the honorary benchers use these facilities regularly.
Senior members of the Bar are selected as benchers, while leading figures from national and international law and politics are sometimes invited to become honorary benchers. There are about 100 benchers, including many senior members of the judiciary, and more than 40 honorary benchers.
Ms Booth's husband, Mr Blair, was made an honorary bencher three years ago in a blaze of publicity which included a speech from him, from the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, and the then Chief Justice, Mr Justice Hamilton.
This will be a more private affair, according to Ms Camilla McAleese, the under-treasurer of the King's Inns. The ceremony will be followed by dinner. It will be "in camera", she said, which was usual. "The Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales was here a few weeks ago. He came and went and nobody knew," she said.
Honorary bencher status does not qualify the person to practise at the Irish bar.
The only other women honorary benchers in the past 30 years have been the President, Mrs McAleese, and former president Mrs Mary Robinson.