LIKE AN image from an old master’s courtroom painting, six of the Law Library’s finest sit hunched around one side of the front table, bespectacled and robed, the whiff of importance, erudition and prosperity of the ancien regime only slightly marred by the sight of Shane Murphy SC being obliged to haul up his own swivel chair.
The other crude modern intrusion is the fortress of sharply-branded box files – “Banker Box” for the plaintiff, “Iron Mountain” for the Nama side – marching across the tables, up the walls and creeping up the sides of the bench occupied by the three venerable High Court judges entrusted with a decision that could send Nama, the banks, the developers and the boggle-eyed taxpayer – not to mention the mystical, mercurial markets – screaming back to the drawing board.
As the honourable judges told us more than once, they’ve had to work their way through six boxes of files apiece to prepare for this. God alone knows what the backroom lawyers – four of them sitting opposite the barristers – had to excavate before distilling the paperwork to this mile-a-minute triffid.
Michael Cush SC even used a Banker Box as a table-top lectern to read his opening submissions on behalf of Paddy McKillen – a property investor, not a property developer, he told us more than once. The glee with which the legal system surely welcomed this case can only be guessed at. Just as the tribunals wither, along comes Nama and what Mr Cush calls “a total shut-out of fair procedures”. At least 10 more legal types busily took notes behind him as he laid into the opposition’s stated precedents.
He even managed to chuck a long reference to McCarthyism and its calamitous communist designation into the mix – no reflection on the Nama designation, of course – noting that even though national security was an issue in the US at the time, even then it was recognised in a court ruling that “designation is a huge issue . . . and that due process must be respected in times of calm and in times of trouble”. This all emerged in the same cool monotone that had elicited audible snores from some unimpressed punter in the morning.
Despite the stratospheric stakes and its location in one of the grand old Round Hall courts that once hosted the most sensational murder and rape trials (decide for yourself if there is any similarity), this is not a case for the casual court-watcher. The court is not being asked to decide if Nama is a good or bad idea or – sadly – about disputes between valuers.
There is nothing to see here, ladies and gentlemen, apart from judges, lawyers, journalists in the jury box and truckloads of box files, so move along now. Yes, McKillen will be “dropping in and out”, conceded his pleasant PR representative, but she wouldn’t be telling us when, because he is such a deeply private person and she is in attendance only to clear up any factual questions we might have about the case.
This poses a dilemma, as the only publicly available picture of the main man depicts him at a black tie event, dark-haired and youthful, or at least 20 years younger than his current 55.
It’s a safe bet that he has gray hair by now as well as a healthy glow, as he spends only about 20 nights a year in Ireland and divides his time between London and Los Angeles, where his wife and children live.
We were briefly hopeful about a man with a healthy glow leaning with intent against a far wall but he turned out to be his right-hand man, Liam Cunningham.
Now who wouldn’t like to lay eyes on this thoroughly remarkable Irishman who has come through the bust owning 62 properties around the world, with 96 per cent of them let, mostly to blue-chip clients on 25-year leases, all together pulling in about €150 million a year; the man who at the same time, was such a staunch client of Anglo Irish Bank that he was one of the golden 10 approached to buy 10 per cent of the bank’s shares held by Seán Quinn?
Still, despite the earlier reassuring note that Mr Cush has just five “key points” to make, and Paul Gallagher – the Attorney General, leading the Nama legal team unusually – only seven, the case threatens to continue for 10 days or two weeks or, since this is the courts, who knows . . . Plenty of time yet for Hamlet to show.