O'Flaherty provides answers but no explanations for his actions

In his interview with Eamon Dunphy on Today FM's The Last Word, Hugh O'Flaherty provided many answers but no explanations. For all the eloquence with which he presented himself as a "humble servant of the people" victimised by "hype", he failed to clear up the mystery of how an allegedly simple query led to the highly irregular overturning of a lawful court verdict. If anything, the mystery of the Sheedy case is now deeper than ever.

Before yesterday Mr O'Flaherty and his supporters had stuck to a single explanation of why one of the State's most senior judges got involved in a case in which he had no jurisdiction. His defenders seized on the use of the word "humanitarian" in Mr Justice Hamilton's report and repeated it ad nauseum.

Yet in his very first reply, Mr O'Flaherty told Eamon Dunphy that "humanitarian wasn't the best word" to describe his motivation. Instead of painting himself as a Good Samaritan he was anxious to portray himself simply as a judge going about his normal business of administering justice and trying to clear up a messy case.

This may seem like a small detail, but it is a highly significant change in Mr O'Flaherty's presentation of events. When questioned by Mr Justice Hamilton last year, he maintained that his only reason for speaking to the Registrar of the High Court, Michael Quinlan, was to check the accuracy of what he had told the couple who approached him on the street. In talking to them he had suggested there might be a possibility of having the case relisted. He spoke to Mr Quinlan because he "wished to have such possibility confirmed".

On last evening's account, however, Mr O'Flaherty's involvement was much more pro-active. He was, as he put it, "suggesting a course of action to have a case come before the court". This wasn't a general inquiry inspired by compassion. It was a deliberate plan to get Philip Sheedy out of jail.

The implications of this are enormous. For if Justice O'Flaherty's actions were, as he seemed to suggest, relatively routine, then the kind of private influence which operated in the Sheedy case is also a routine feature of the operation of the law in Ireland. So was the Sheedy affair a weird aberration or merely a dramatic example of what passes for normality? Unfortunately, Mr O'Flaherty's answers are hopelessly self-contradictory.

The most extraordinary aspect of the interview was Hugh O'Flaherty's inability to make up his mind about whether or not his actions in the Sheedy case were "unprecedented". Did he know of any other judge who had intervened in the way that he did in the Sheedy case? "No, and I don't recall that I intervened in the way I did in any other case, precisely that way."

Later, however, when Eamon Dunphy put it to him again that his intervention in the Sheedy case was "without precedent", he replied that "I don't think so. I would have done much the same sort of thing in other realms, not necessarily in criminal cases - in civil cases and so on. I would have pointed the way for people to get their case into court."

Yet later still, when Eamon Dunphy again put it to him that his actions were unprecedented he replied: "I suppose I would agree, yes." Sometimes, it seems, his intervention was unprecedented, while at others it was merely part of the way the system worked.

This raises questions that the Dail cannot afford to ignore. If Mr O'Flaherty did "the same sort of thing in other cases", what were those cases? How often does this kind of thing happen? According to Mr Justice O'Flaherty, after all, the Court of Criminal Appeal is run "on a reasonably informal basis" with "a lot of ad hoc decisions made". The fact that Mr O'Flaherty still "can't see what's wrong" with the Sheedy case suggests certain kinds of ad hoc decision-making have become institutionalised.

Even accepting Hugh O'Flaherty's new account of his motivation, it is still hard to understand why he went about it in the way he did. Casually and almost in parenthesis last evening, Mr O'Flaherty admitted that there was a perfectly proper way for Philip Sheedy's family to go about having his case relisted. Mr Sheedy could, he said, "apply to extend the time (for an appeal) and bring his case to the Court of Criminal Appeal and that would have been feasible". Yet this perfectly feasible procedure was set aside in favour of an extraordinary manoeuvre with no basis in the ordinary legal system.

According to Mr O'Flaherty he told the couple they "could get their solicitor to bring a motion to have it re-listed in the court". But this is not what happened. Philip Sheedy's solicitor was contacted, not by his client or his family, but by Mr Quinlan. The initiative came from within the court system, not from the defendant. Even in the terms set out by Mr O'Flaherty account last evening, this was a breach of his own understanding of what ought to happen.

Most alarmingly, however, Mr O'Flaherty seems to see such things as the due process that guarantees equality before the law as essentially irrelevant. With any case, he asked, "Once it gets re-listed, does it matter how it comes to be relisted?" Again the public urgently needs to know how widespread is this attitude among Mr O'Flaherty's judicial colleagues.

One thing that does seem clear is that Hugh O'Flaherty genuinely does not understand what the problem is with a system of justice that favours those who happen to be in a position to meet Supreme Court justices casually on the street.

When Eamon Dunphy asked whether Mr O'Flaherty was in the habit of assisting only people he knew, or whether this special remedy was available to other people, like for example, Eamon Dunphy himself, Mr O'Flaherty began to say "Well, you're sufficiently well known I suppose. . ." before, perhaps, thinking better of it and trailing off into momentary silence.

In the end, we are left with the fundamental mystery of why a popular and well-respected judge like Cyril Kelly put himself at extraordinary risk by re-hearing the Sheedy case on the basis of a non-existent new psychological report. Hugh O'Flaherty was adamant that he didn't discuss the progress of the case with Michael Quinlan after the initial contact, or with Cyril Kelly at all.

The one thing that should be absolutely clear is that this case is not going to go away until the public is given a satisfactory explanation for what those men went on to do.

The one we have now - sheer mad cap coincidence - just will not do.