A retired senior judge has warned of rushing to judgment against attendees at the Oireachtas Golf Society dinner and unfairly hounding "good people" out of office for "one serious mistake".
Former Court of Appeal judge Garrett Sheehan said there was a “great danger in the present situation that good people who have committed their lives to public service are now being publicly humiliated and unfairly hounded out of office for having relied on the judgment of others to keep them right regarding Covid-19 regulations”.
The retired judge was asked by The Irish Times to comment on the situation facing Supreme Court Justice Séamus Woulfe who was among 81 guests at the dinner in a Connemara hotel last week that appeared to breach public health guidelines aimed at preventing the spread of coronavirus.
Mr Justice Woulfe has said he attended the dinner after a golf event on the understanding that it fell within the Government public health guidelines. He apologised for any unintentional breach.
Mr Justice Sheehan said he accepted the "utmost importance" of abiding by Government advice and for political leaders to set a good example "but the relentless fuelling of public anger by some politicians and some sections of the media is in my view not good for democracy".
It needs to be explained clearly “how the drive for ratings is affecting the quality and fairness of public discourse,” said the former Central Criminal Court judge who retired in 2017.
“There is a danger that good people will refrain from entering public life having witnessed the personal consequences for many people of having made one serious mistake,” he said.
‘Cowardly’
The Supreme Court yesterday evening asked former Chief Justice Susan Denham to review whether Mr Justice Woulfe should have attended the dinner and to report her conclusions and recommendations on whether he should have accepted the invitation.
The retired judge has also been asked by the court to consider whether Mr Woulfe “should, in all circumstances, have left the hotel in the light of the situation prevailing” and whether he should have played golf, which is permitted under health guidelines, but not attended the dinner.
She has been requested to consider "any relevant codes of practice or guidelines" and to make recommendations on this area in her report to the Chief Justice Frank Clarke.
Meanwhile, Shane Ross, the former Government minister, said that Mr Justice Woulfe, his former Cabinet colleague, should resign for making "an exceptionally serious mistake".
“By clinging on to his office, Séamus Woulfe is sending all the wrong signals to those of us wishing to reform the judiciary. He should step down,” he said.
The former TD described resistance by leading party politicians to calling for his resignation by “pleading the separation of powers” between the Oireachtas and the judiciary as “cowardly”.
Mr Ross and Mr Woulfe, the former attorney general, clashed during the last government over the former minister’s attempts to overhaul the judicial appointments process.
