Born: November 4th, 1936
Died: January 13th, 2025
Patrick MacEntee SC QC was born in 1936 into a middle-class family in Monaghan town. His father was a dentist. His mother, born in England, was of Irish stock. He was educated at his local Christian Brothers school, St Macartan’s college in Monaghan and at University College Dublin, where he graduated and had been an active member in the Dramsoc society.
Called to the Bar in 1960, he devilled with Herbert McWilliam, a distinguished Presbyterian Northern circuit barrister who later became a judge of the High Court. MacEntee practised across the Northern circuit as a junior counsel, a role at which he excelled.
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He deployed his innate curiosity, intellect and willingness to pursue the often-elusive separation of truth from lies, and justice from injustice, in the representation of his clients.
The outbreak of the Troubles provoked a quest for arms and money by subversives in the State and led to the IRA and splinter groups engaging in murders, robberies, extortions and kidnappings. Their example was followed by criminal gangs in Dublin, too.
While still a junior, his practice gravitated away from the Northern circuit towards the Dublin criminal courts and to the non-jury Special Criminal Court after it was re-established in 1972. That brought with it powers of arrest and lengthy detention under the Offences against the State Act 1939 for scheduled offences, which did not include many serious offences such as murder or robbery.
Gardaí had no general powers applicable to all serious offences to arrest and detain people for the purposes of criminal investigation until the Criminal Justice Act 1984 was finally commenced in 1987, after the Garda Complaints Board had been established and the Treatment of Persons in Custody Regulations were signed. Previously, people were euphemistically said to be “helping police with their inquiries”.
Investigative and evidentiary tools available to the gardaí had been rudimentary. That changed dramatically with the evolution and deployment of forensic science in Irish criminal courtrooms which started in 1975, the year MacEntee took silk.
With the opening of the State’s forensic science laboratory, judges, juries and practitioners were faced with expert evidence that could include complex analysis of firearms residue, glass, paint, fibres, explosives, hair, blood, saliva, ballistics and ordnance evidence. Later came linguistic analysis, ESDA analysis, and forensic examination of confessions, police notes and statements, and DNA.
These were often the fields of battle facing MacEntee for the greater part of his career. He mastered and dealt with all these areas, whether in the Special Criminal Court or the ordinary courts. His skills were based on a clear understanding of the science underlying such evidence, what it was based on and what it could establish or not. This allowed him to demonstrate his greatest skill: that of cross examination. He could be relentless and devastating.
Other great qualities were his independence and fearlessness. This confluence of talents and circumstances ensured he came to be regarded by many of his peers as the greatest Irish criminal barrister of the last 100 years. No one else has represented so many clients in so many high-profile, difficult and often unpopular cases in the brightest glare of publicity.
In the non-jury Special Criminal Court, he fearlessly defended many cases which depended largely on alleged admissions and the disputed credibility of witnesses dubbed the “the Heavy Gang”.
From high-profile cases such as the Malcolm Macarthur trial, the Mountbatten murder trial and the Fr Molloy case to the Catherine Nevin trial, his criminal trials were rarely out of the headlines. His became a household name as the country’s leading criminal advocate.
He also had a major extradition practice, including the Trimbole case and the Evelyn Glenholmes case. After Robert Trimbole’s Australian extradition warrant request was rejected, Australian media surrounded MacEntee outside court demanding to know whether and how much he had been paid. He replied that he would be very disappointed if they thought he was just an enthusiastic amateur.
Similarly besieged by English press demanding to know what had happen after the UK warrant was found to be flawed in the Glenholmes case, he said: “We call it the rule of law; you claim to have invented it.”
His reputation took him to other jurisdictions. In Northern Ireland, he appeared in the Harry Kirkpatrick supergrass trial, having taken silk as a QC there. In England he appeared for Paddy Armstrong, who had been wrongly convicted of the Guildford and Woolwich bombings, in the ultimate successful appeal. In Tanzania, he appeared for an unfortunate Irish businessman who had been wrongly jailed in the course of commercial litigation.
MacEntee later became chairman of the Bar Council and a bencher of the King’s Inns – marks of the popularity, respect and friendship he enjoyed among his colleagues. He was witty, well read, a formidable intellect and a shrewd observer of character.
He was not favoured with instructions from state bodies or authorities until well into his career of approximately 54 years, perhaps due to prejudice and typecasting.
Eventually he appeared regularly for health boards/HSE particularly in relation to the accommodation of young persons in the care of the State and as counsel in state civil litigation. He was appointed sole commissioner to report on the Dublin/Monaghan bombings.
[ The great defender is on the case ]
In July 2010, a dinner was held in King’s Inns to celebrate him reaching the milestone of 50 years in practice. He decided to ease back in practice.
Unsurprisingly for someone so much in the public eye, MacEntee lived a private life. He was known to be a gay man in the long, dark decades preceding decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1993.
He and his partner Richard Reilly lived quietly in Rathmines, Dublin, in an elegant but secluded mews, lined with books, furnished with Kilim rugs and adorned with an extensive art and portrait collection. They had two Afghan hounds and had two parrots which had flying rights around the house when not perched in their finely planted conservatory.
Saturday was a day of respite from work, involving trips to town, a drink or two with friends in McDaids, Davy Byrnes or The Bailey followed by lunch and browsing in bookshops or art galleries. Sundays often involved a trip to The Hill pub in company of friends including John and Harden Jay and MacEntee’s goddaughter, Ferris.
His professional success allowed him to buy an apartment in Paris which became a joyous retreat from the pressure of his professional life and in part led to his engagement with the Irish cultural centre in that city.
But he never indulged in conspicuous consumption or other outward trappings of success. His modest and battered car was affectionately known by colleagues as a “mobile ashtray”.
MacEntee had many loyal friends including legal colleagues and well-known poets, writers, actors, artists, and architects. He and Richard married after 40 years together. Sadly, Richard died before him.
MacEntee died in his 89th year, survived by his brother, Michael, and his sister, Betty, both of whom live in North America.
