I sometimes wonder about foreign ambassadors here who have to report back to their bosses in company headquarters. How do they perform the virtually impossible function of telling their home base what's going on here, while simultaneously concealing the truth that they haven't got a clue?
It's not that they can't read English or that Irish politics are more convoluted than anywhere else, but there seem to be trigger points within Irish society which cause a froth and frenzy entirely out of scale with their cause. There is no more spectacular example of this than the O'Flaherty affair. How do the ambassadors sitting in their studies preparing their reports for the edification of their foreign ministers explain the ruin which has been visited on this man, even to the point of making him rather satisfyingly homeless?
Small minority
"Oh Most Celestial Minister for Foreign Affairs, Sage of the Seven Seas, Master of the Main, Light of a Thousand Cities, it is is my pleasure and duty to explain the downfall and ruin of the senior Irish judge, Hugh O'Flaherty. This scallywag, this insect, this paragon of vice, actually used his high office to. . to. . ..do what?" The ambassador puts down his pen and gazes into the night. He hasn't a clue what this supposed scoundrel has done.
Nor have I. I admit I'm in a small minority here, and that everyone else agrees that whatever Hugh O'Flaherty did was a downright disgrace and he should be packed off to spend his days plying the oars in a slave galley. But I genuinely don't know what he did wrong. So for my edification, and perhaps for that of all those ambassadors rubbing their eyes at 1 a.m. as they try to explain to the boss back home why the edifice of a judge's career lies in rubble, and why his name has become a by-word for abuse of power, let's briefly go over the evidence again.
But firstly, a word of warning. We are not looking at Cyril Kelly here, nor at Philip Sheedy, nor at the Ryan family - the concern for whom has been tinged with a certain selective, not to say hypocritical, indignation. Hundreds of people are killed on our roads every year, their deaths normally sidelined in single paragraph filler stories, attracting no public grief or anger, as this column has repeatedly pointed out. Each of those deaths is a personal and familial catastrophe as great as that to befall the Ryans; and, unlike Philip Sheedy, virtually no-one ever does a day's imprisonment for causing those deaths.
So. We are looking at Hugh O'Flaherty alone. What did he do? Having met a sister of Philip Sheedy by chance, and having heard her concern about her brother, then doing four years' imprisonment for the manslaughter of Anne Ryan, Mr Justice O'Flaherty suggested that if she went back to her solicitors, it might be possible for them to seek a judicial review of the sentence, as a recent judgment, DPP vs McDonagh, had indicated.
Mentioned case
Some days later, the judge asked the County Registrar for the Circuit Court about the circumstances in which sentenced prisoners could apply to have their sentences reviewed. He mentioned the Sheedy case to him and also gave him a report of the McDonagh case. This was the beginning, middle and end of Hugh O'Flaherty's involvement in the matter. He did not arrange for its relisting, nor did he make representations on Sheedy's behalf.
Mr Justice Hamilton described the O'Flaherty intervention as inappropriate and unwise, and said that it left his action open to misinterpretation, and that it was therefore damaging to the administration of justice. And boy, did old Beef Tribunal Hamilton speak the truth when he referred to an action being open to misinterpretation, because few things in Irish life have been so grossly misinterpreted as Mr Justice O'Flaherty's single humanitarian gesture towards Philip Sheedy.
Did he lean on the scales of justice? No. Did he pervert the rule of the law? No. Did he show jurisprudential favouritism to a friend? No. Did he even arrange for the case to be relisted? No. What did he do that was wrong? He performed an action capable of misinterpretation.
And which of us has not done that? What action of any court is not open to misinterpretation? Might not others have said the same about the findings of the Beef Tribunal, or indeed about any tribunal which has ever sat in this land or any other?
Visible vengeance
It comes down to this. An examination of the O'Flaherty affair is more a branch of socio-psychology than of law. Mr O'Flaherty has served to ease the almost insatiable public need for visible vengeance for all the unpunished corruption in Irish life. From rancid beef to contaminated blood to book-cooking banks, guilty people have got away with fraud, theft and worse. Have got away with, and will get away with: for we know that forthcoming punishment will not be visited on senior bank officials who defrauded the Revenue Commissioners, and whatever repayment AIB and the Bank of Ireland make will be paid for through increased bank charges levied on a fuming, unfailingly hapless public.
In such circumstances, what does any society do? It finds a totemic victim, a scapegoat; and Lord above, instead of the handy Jew or the convenient black man of other societies, we are suddenly handed a fat juicy bigwig to have our way with. Perfect.
That, Mr and Madame Ambassador, is the key to the O'Flaherty affair. It is a metaphorical, highly sanctimonious lynching by liberals.