So far as I can work out, the Chief Justice, Liam Hamilton, is not to be paid a single extra penny for his inquiry into the Sheedy business, and a thorough investigation by my team of intrepid sleuths has indicated that there is little chance of any barristers being paid either. This is a scandalous state of affairs. What is this State about but the collection of revenue from the wealth-creating classes and its disbursal by means of tribunal to the perukes?
L'affaire Sheedy is perfectly suited for a tribunal, since every lawyer at this particular trough would have been well acquainted with the territory - the courts, the meluds, the DPP, the AG and that class of caper generally. No need to be mugging up on briefs on the tribunal steps. Everyone would have known everyone else for yoinks. Enormous respect. Esteemed colleagues. Eminent counsel, et cetera. No odd little octogenarians from north Co Dublin putting their wigs awry and their knickers in a twist.
Now as we know, Philip Sheedy, who killed a young mother while drunk-driving, was freed after serving only one year of a four-year jail sentence, and this is what the leading melud in the land was investigating, though without a tribunal nor nothing, your honour. And now the legal profession has exhaustively examined how a man who accidentally killed a mother served only one year in jail, it might then set about the business of asking why another man who deliberately and savagely knifed another young mother to death in a contract killing has not even faced trial.
Murder conspiracy
Rose-Marie Moran was the victim of a carefully planned and brutally implemented murder conspiracy by her husband Joseph and her niece Anita McKeown, who together employed two men to hack her to death in her home in Newry. The last time I wrote about this affair, I began by musing aloud about how it was that musicians and writers had recently "put on a show of solidarity" with Robert Drake, who had been beaten unconscious in Sligo, but no-one had put on a show of solidarity with Rose-Marie.
But of course, Robert Drake belongs to the class for whom people put on shows of solidarity. He is a homosexual and also, apparently, a writer, though I don't know what of. The assault is the subject of criminal proceedings, so there's not much one can say about it, other than there's no obvious evidence that he was attacked because of his sexual orientation or because he was a writer. But we can be sure that had he been an elderly shopkeeper bound and gagged and left to die of hypothermia in his shop, he would not have attracted a show of "solidarity."
Bitter response
If he was beaten for his sexuality it is of course deplorable; but more so than if he were beaten because he was an American, or because he was a writer or simply because he was there? I don't know the answer to these questions. But I do know that there was a bitter response to my column from solidaritists; and not a word, not a single word, about poor Rose-Marie Moran, who was neither an American, a writer nor a homosexual.
We know that a Dundalk man has been repeatedly named in court as the man who was her primary killer. He accepted the contract to murder her from her niece and her husband. He knifed her in her home over 30 times. He was later arrested by the Garda Siochana on foot of extradition warrants from the RUC. He was then freed on appeal by a court led by Mr Justice Hamilton because of legal inadequacies in the extradition warrant from the RUC.
Since then, no fresh warrant has been issued. One question. Why not? In the absence of a warrant or an arrest, this man is still free. He has never gone to trial. So far as I know, he has even kept the contract fee for the killing. One wonders: did he declare it to the Revenue Commissioners? He is clearly a competent murderer, so anyone in the Dundalk area who wants someone inconvenient bumped off would be well advised to get in touch with him. It's probably ages since he last butchered anyone: he must be getting restless.
A legal scandal
We know full well there would be outrage among the modish, right-on constituency who do things in "solidarity" if the victim had been Robert Drake, or had been named Rosemary Nelson rather than Rose-Marie Moran, and the alleged killer had escaped justice through some legal technicality. But she didn't belong to the victim classes. She was an ordinary mother. She is dead. Her alleged killer is not a Brit or peeler. He has been apprehended by our legal system which then freed him without ever hearing the evidence against him.
That, it seems to me, is a far greater scandal than anything which might or might not have happened in the freeing of Philip Sheedy. This case asks more penetrating questions of our legal culture and how our courts operate than any case I can think of. Perhaps that is the real reason why there is no enquiry into it, tribunal or otherwise.