Sir, - Gerry Curran's assertion (January 22nd) that "family law courts do not operate in secrecy" astounds me. In fact Irish family law courts operate with such secrecy that a journalist was recently refused a High Court judgment from which all names and identifying details had already been removed by the same judge!
It is not that we don't have already a better way of balancing a decent privacy with public scrutiny of the operation of the family law courts. The operation of the in camera rule in criminal rape trials provides an obvious model for ensuring the privacy of the parties while allowing for public scrutiny - a point made at a recent TCD Law School seminar by Mr Justice Paul Carney.
The statutory restriction in family law trials requires that proceedings "shall be heard otherwise than in public", and a breach of this restriction constitutes a criminal contempt of court, punishable by a prison sentence or a fine or both. But this restriction - "otherwise than in public" - is so vague and ill-defined as to be open to constitutional challenge (see King v. Attorney General, 1981) and to amount to a breach of Articles l6 and 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights relating to public judgments (see Werner v. Austria, 1997) and ill-defined criminal offences (see Sunday Times v. UK (1979).
The result of this ill defined restriction on the freedom of the press is an almost total blanket of secrecy surrounding Irish family law, depriving legislators, journalists and the public of an understanding of the operation of recent family law legislation, and lay litigants of any effective redress for professional misconduct by barristers, solicitors or family assessors.
This time last year, the Sunday Independent ran a frontpage story detailing Mr Justice McCracken's interpretation of the four-year living apart requirement for divorce. Despite writing to the judge in question asking for clarification, I have been unable to establish whether this article was, in fact, a breach of the in camera rule!
Mr Curran referred to the Chief Justice's comments on the "relaxed" nature of family law hearings. I suggest he read Mr Justice Ronan Keane's judgment in Irish Times v. Mr Justice Anthony Murphy, 1998, where he states:
"The most benign climate for the growth of curruption and abuse of powers, whether by the judiciary or the legal profession, is one of secrecy." - Yours, etc.,
Dr Bob McCormack, Iveragh Road, Whitehall, Dublin 9.