Warm tributes were led by the Chief Justice and Attorney General to Supreme Court judge Elizabeth Dunne on her retirement after an “extraordinary” 30 years as a judge in the Irish courts.
Attorney General Rossa Fanning announced Dunne will be nominated by the Government to chair the Standards in Public Office Commission, an office he had “no doubt” she would discharge with her “characteristic understated efficiency and excellence”.
Chief Justice Donal O’Donnell said, throughout her “extraordinary” judicial career in the Circuit, High and Supreme courts, Dunne was “calm, thoughtful, low key, efficient and understated”. She was also a “kind, generous and sympathetic person, unfailingly helpful to her colleagues”.
Dunne had presided over big constitutional cases, including that by former minister Katherine Zappone and her partner Ann-Louise Gilligan, he said. Her High Court judgment finding that the Constitution does not recognise same-sex marriage, “carefully navigated all the complex issues” and reflected a judge “just doing her job”.
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The judgment had led directly to a referendum, thus “empowering the people”, and to legal change providing for same-sex marriage.
Tributes were also delivered on behalf of the Bar of Ireland, Law Society, Courts Service, Judicial Council, and the Supreme Court office.
The large attendance for the tributes in the Supreme Court on Friday included many serving and retired judges.
Dunne’s husband, James Dwyer – a senior counsel, and their two children, Lucy and Daniel, both barristers, and her three brothers, were among several family members present.
In her response, Dunne said being asked to serve as a judge was an “enormous privilege”.
Noting her departure will leave just two women judges on the nine-judge Supreme Court, she said she hoped the drop in women members did not mean “going backwards on a permanent basis”.
Her retirement, and the upcoming retirement of her colleague Judge Peter Charleton, means two vacancies on the top court will be filled over the coming months.
Born in Roscommon in 1956, Dunne’s father, who died when she was a teenager, was a Garda superintendent who led the training of the first women Garda recruits.
Dunne was called to the Bar in 1977, where she had a successful practice, including in banking, planning and defamation.
As a 30-year-old barrister in 1986, she and Harry Whelehan, later an attorney general, presented the case for the Yes side during a Late Late Show “mock trial” on the impending divorce referendum, which attracted 600,000 viewers.
In 1996, she became the second woman to be appointed a judge of the Circuit Court, where she served until her promotion to the High Court in 2004. She was appointed to the Supreme Court in 2013.
While a judge of the High Court, she jailed businessman Sean Quinn and his son, Seán Quinn jnr, for contempt of court orders not to put assets beyond receivers appointed by State-owned Irish Bank Resolution Corporation.
In the Supreme Court, she delivered several significant judgments, including the 2022 majority 4-3 judgment ruling that the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (Ceta) was unconstitutional as it stood because the investor-State dispute settlement mechanism undermined Irish judicial sovereignty.
In a 2020 judgment, she found the law governing the procedure under which Irish citizenship could be revoked was unconstitutional because it did not provide the necessary procedural safeguards.
Among several other roles, Dunne served as chairwoman of the board of the Courts Service and of the Judicial Council’s Personal Injuries Guidelines Committee.
