Colm CondonCOLM CONDON, who has died aged 87, was a former attorney general and also enjoyed a long and successful career at the Bar. His tenure as attorney general coincided with the outbreak of the Northern Ireland Troubles, and much of his time was taken up with matters related to the security of the State.
He was called to the Bar in 1944 and became a senior counsel in 1959. First appointed as attorney general in March 1965 by taoiseach Seán Lemass, he continued to serve under Mr Lemass's successor Jack Lynch. He stood down in 1973 when the Fine Gael-led coalition came to power.
The highest profile case in which he was involved was the arms trial. Until the office of Director of Public Prosecutions was established in 1973, it was the attorney general who prosecuted criminal cases.
As such, Mr Condon took, on behalf of the State, the prosecution against then minister Charles Haughey on charges of conspiring to import arms at a time when both men were members of the cabinet.
However, in 1997, Mr Condon, along with Eoin McGonigle, was of one of two senior counsel who appeared for Mr Haughey at the Moriarty tribunal and in High Court proceedings challenging the inquiry's powers.
Mr Condon also played a key role in drafting legislation that led to the establishment in 1972 of the modern Special Criminal Court.
In September 1972 at Strasbourg he presented the Irish Government case that the British authorities had violated the European Human Rights Convention in Northern Ireland, and in 1976 the British were found to have breached the convention.
In August 1973 he denied knowing that the Littlejohn brothers, convicted of bank robbery after their extradition from Britain, were British agents. He was responding to a Government statement which, he claimed, implied that the administration of justice under him as attorney general had been "dishonest", which "disgusting imputation" he rejected.
He was subsequently assigned by the Supreme Court to argue against the constitutionality of legislation that gave legal effect to the Sunningdale Agreement in the Republic.
Born in 1921 in Ashbourne, Co Meath, he was educated at Terenure College and University College Dublin.
He built up a successful practice, concentrating mainly on defamation and personal injury cases. He represented Síle de Valera and Mary Harney as plaintiffs in separate cases, and defended the Sunday World in a case brought by former minister for justice Patrick Cooney.
During the November 1982 general election campaign he clashed with former Fine Gael attorney general John Kelly over the role of the attorney general. This followed Mr Kelly's allegation that the then attorney general John Murray had permitted his "constitutional office and authority to be mobilised in a controversial election dog-fight".
Mr Condon said that Mr Murray had not alone a right but a duty to express his opinions about "ill-considered and dangerous" proposals of the Fine Gael leader, Dr Garret FitzGerald.
As the 1990 presidential election campaign drew to a close, he accused Mary Robinson of making assertions about judges which undermined the Council of State with which she would have to work if elected president. In reply, Ms Robinson said she held the Irish judiciary in "great respect and affection".
In 2001, a new controversy emerged on the events of the arms trial when RTÉ's Prime Time programme revealed that a statement made in 1970 by Col Michael Hefferon, the head of military intelligence, was changed to protect Jim Gibbons, the minister of defence, and to buttress the State case against Mr Haughey and Neil Blaney.
The documentary disclosed that the original statement made by Col Hefferon was withheld from Mr Condon who, as attorney general, was preparing the case.
He was in 2002 critical of the State's "indemnity deal" with religious orders which limited the exposure of those orders to law suits by victims of religious child-abuse.
"The attorney general protects the Constitution," he commented. "You can't properly make an agreement of that kind without the consent of the attorney general."
Predeceased by his first wife Stephanie (née Power), he is survived by his second wife Jacqueline (née Owens), his sons Colm P and Eoin and daughters Stephanie and Carolyn.
Colm Condon: born July 16th, 1921; died August 9th, 2008