THE GOVERNMENT has nominated Mr Justice Liam McKechnie for appointment to the Supreme Court.
High-profile cases he has decided in the High Court included the Lydia Foy transsexual case, which came before him twice.
His nomination comes the day after it was announced that the Government was withdrawing its appeal against his 2007 judgment that the Civil Registration Act 2004, which did not permit the issuing of a new birth certificate to Lydia Foy, a transsexual, was incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.
Mr Justice McKechnie was born in 1951 and educated in Presentation Brothers Cork, UCC and the King’s Inns. He was called to the bar in 1972 and became a senior counsel in 1987. He was elected chairman of the Bar Council in 1999, and was appointed as a judge of the High Court in 2000.
Earlier this year he was elected president of the Association of European Competition Law Judges, which represents judges from each of the 27 EU member states. Mr Justice McKechnie holds a master’s degree in European law and presides over competition matters in the High Court.
Other prominent cases in the High Court included the “Mr G” case, where he ruled that an unmarried father whose estranged partner brought the children to Britain without his consent had substantial rights under article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, and a case in which he ruled the HSE could not prevent a 17-year-old girl from travelling abroad for an abortion.
He recently ruled comprehensively against a group of Killarney jarveys who had brought a High Court challenge to a requirement that they fit their jaunting cars with dung-catchers. He caused some surprise in legal circles two years ago when he rejected an application from the Law Society that he strike off two solicitors who had pleaded guilty to 50 charges of professional misconduct. Henry Colley and Colm Carroll had operated undisclosed bank accounts in a “deliberate and elaborate scheme of tax evasion”, including one account into which €32 million was lodged over three years.
Mr Justice McKechnie, standing in for the then president of the court, Mr Justice Johnson, upheld the earlier decision of the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal and declined to strike them off. His decision, which was appealed by the Law Society, was later upheld by the Supreme Court.
His nomination to the Supreme Court is to replace Mr Justice Hugh Geoghegan, who retired last month.