Mr Justice Ronan Keane's interview with RTE on Sunday was the first of its kind to have been given by a serving Chief Justice. Coinciding with the start of the legal year, it set a welcome precedent in an area of public life not usually characterised by the openness and accountability which those who influence opinion regularly demand of politicians, administrators and leaders of industry.
But these are no ordinary times for anyone active in public life; and the Chief Justice acknowledged that members of the judiciary must be subject to scrutiny, though - unlike the procession of politicians, public servants and businessmen whose affairs are now being examined by judges - the judiciary should be subject to self-regulation. The Chief Justice looked again at the resignations of Mr Hugh O'Flaherty and Mr Cyril Kelly in the Sheedy affair and, reflecting the concerns of both public and judiciary, spoke of the inadequacy of a system which lacks formal procedures to deal with complaints of judicial misconduct. Most unsatisfactorily, it provides no remedy short of impeachment by the Oireachtas.
When he was asked about issues raised by Mr O'Flaherty and by others who supported him, Mr Justice Keane left no doubt as to where he stood. The Court of Criminal Appeal was not run on an informal basis; that was not how any court should be run. No judge should give advice to people they met socially, they should be told to see their solicitors. And individual judges should not go "on solo runs" with the media.
There was, however, a compelling case for a body to deal with complaints against members of the judiciary: it is one of the issues being discussed by the Committee on Judicial Conduct and Ethics over which the Chief Justice presides and it was the change which he most emphatically proposed. He believed the case had not been made for allowing television cameras into the courts: "the dangers would outweigh the public benefit". And on the appointment of judges he cautiously supported the present system in which the Government selects its nominees from a list of candidates presented by an advisory board. Everyone, he said, knew that appointments were made on a political basis. A different system would require constitutional change.
The Chief Justice's views represent the judiciary as a whole in the wake of the Sheedy affair. The interview was clearly a policy statement from senior judges. It is welcome in the unusual circumstances of the past 18 months when the Government was prepared to invoke the constitutional provision to initiate impeachment proceedings. This was a matter on which the judiciary had to have a public view. If the Chief Justice favours self-regulation, and appears satisfied that the Sheedy (or O'Flaherty) affair has not done lasting damage, Ms Justice Susan Denham, his colleague on the Supreme Court and on the Committee on Judicial Conduct and Ethics, takes a less sanguine view. In an eloquent address to a conference of the Australian Institute of Judicial Administration in July she said the Sheedy case had provoked a constitutional crisis. Indeed, she said it had been "the most serious constitutional crisis involving the judiciary since the foundation of the State." In these circumstances, the head of the judiciary had to take the unprecedented step of expressing an opinion.