Mr Hugh O'Flaherty had been a lawyer for 40 years and a Supreme Court judge for nine when he resigned in April last year along with the newly-appointed High Court judge, Mr Justice Cyril Kelly, and Circuit Court county registrar, Mr Michael Quinlan.
Philip Sheedy was sentenced to four years' imprisonment in November 1997 for dangerous driving leading to the death of a mother of two children, Mrs Anne Ryan, and driving with an excess of alcohol in his blood. A review date was set for November 1999.
However, a year later on November 12th, 1998, in what was regarded as an irregular listing, the matter came before Judge Kelly again. He ordered that the balance of the sentence be suspended so Sheedy had served only one year of the four-year sentence. In February 1999 the Director of Public Prosecutions successfully challenged the decision.
An investigation was instituted by the chief justice, Mr Justice Liam Hamilton.
In the ensuing report the chief justice gave Mr Justice O'Flaherty's statement on events in which he said that in late 1998 he had had a chance meeting with Mr Ken Anderson, a son of family friends. Mr Anderson was accompanied by a sister of Philip Sheedy. During a 5-10 minute conversation they outlined the case to him. He suggested it might be possible to have the case relisted so that it could be looked at again.
He asked Mr Quinlan to see him in his chambers. They spoke for less than two minutes during which time the judge mentioned the Sheedy case. The judge did not ask for the case to be relisted, nor did he discuss the facts of the case.
The chief justice presented his report to the Attorney General on April 15th, 1999. He accepted that Mr Justice O'Flaherty became involved in the case in a spirit of humanitarian interest. However, the report concluded that the case might not have been relisted but for the intervention of Mr Justice O'Flaherty.
"I also conclude that Mr Justice O'Flaherty's intervention was inappropriate and unwise, that it left his motives and action open to misinterpretation and that it was therefore damaging to the administration of justice," the chief justice wrote.
The Hamilton report was referred to the Oireachtas, and Mr Justice O'Flaherty wrote to the Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Equality and Women's Affairs asking that it accept a full statement from him.
The possibility that the two judges would be impeached was raised in the Dail. On April 17th, however, this unprecedented move was averted when Mr Justice O'Flaherty resigned.
Mr Justice O'Flaherty reiterated that he did not believe that contacting the county registrar about the Sheedy case was wrong, but he accepted the chief justice's conclusion that it was open to misinterpretation.
In another dramatic twist, Mr Justice O'Flaherty refused to appear before the committee.
Finally, legislation was passed last June granting an annual pension of £40,000 to Mr O'Flaherty.