Feargus Flood obituary: High Court judge who chaired planning tribunal

As first chair of the tribunal, Mr Justice Flood issued an interim report notable for its direct language and findings of corrupt payments

Born: July 2nd, 1928

Died: September 10th, 2022

Former High Court judge, who has died following a long illness, enjoyed a long and distinguished career as a barrister, on the bench and as the first chairman of the planning tribunal.

As a barrister, Flood worked mainly on the northern circuit as a junior counsel and then in the High Court as a senior counsel before he was appointed as a High Court judge in 1991. He had a much higher public profile, however, when he presided over the public hearings in the landmark tribunal into planning corruption in Dublin from January 1999 to July 2003.

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This tribunal, which continued for another nine years after Mr Justice Flood stepped down, was originally established to examine allegations of corruption against former Fianna Fáil minister Ray Burke. Over the years, its remit was extended to cover wider claims of corruption against developers and politicians in Dublin as well as former assistant Dublin city and county manager George Redmond.

Mr Justice Flood chaired the tribunal for 390 days of public evidence in Dublin Castle. In the early days, his tribunal was subjected to fierce attacks, some of which were aimed at curtailing its investigation of political corruption.

“Mr Justice Flood’s tussles with recalcitrant witnesses and argumentative lawyers became the staple of late-night radio re-enactments and even a theatrical show,” said Irish Times journalist Paul Cullen who covered the Flood tribunal and chronicled its dramatic twists and turns in his book, With a Little Help From My Friends: Planning Corruption in Ireland.

Joe Taylor, who wrote and performed in the revue Will We Get a Receipt for This, Will We **** and the later touring production The Tribunal Show, followed the daily proceedings of the tribunal at Dublin Castle.

“Mr Justice Flood was very polite towards all witnesses but wasn’t afraid to hurry along the barristers’ questioning. He was a learned man with an impish sense of humour,” said Taylor, who fondly recalled how Mr Justice Flood replied to a senior counsel seeking to establish the veracity of a document with the expression: “You may bite the shilling to test its worth.”

When Mr Justice Flood published his interim report on payments made to Ray Burke in 2002, hundreds of people queued on the street to buy it. The report’s direct language and its findings that the payments were corrupt won critical and popular favour.

The tribunal, whose official name was the Tribunal of Inquiry into Certain Planning Matters and Payments, continued to sit and in 2012 issued a final report covering payments made to former taoiseach Bertie Ahern, among others. Mr Justice Alan Mahon, who took over the chair of the tribunal following Mr Justice Flood’s retirement, said Mr Justice Flood was dedicated to this onerous job, doing his best to be fair to everyone.

“He was an exceptional, nice, soft-spoken, cheerful individual who had been popular with barristers as a High Court judge and known to give generous awards of damages in personal injuries cases,” said Mr Justice Mahon.

Although Mr Justice Flood enjoyed much public support for his investigations during the tribunal, many of the findings in his report were unpicked in subsequent court proceedings. Following his work with the planning tribunal, Mr Justice Flood served on the board of the Centre for Public Inquiry, a non-governmental organisation set up in February 2005 with funds from Atlantic Philanthropies to investigate matters of public importance in Irish political, public and corporate life. The organisation investigated the building of a hotel in the shadow of Trim Castle and the Corrib gas project before it closed in April 2006 due to the withdrawal of funds from the Chuck Feeney foundation.

Feargus Flood was the only child of Michael and Brigid Flood. He spent his childhood in Ballybofey, Co Donegal, where his father was a bank manager. Following his primary school education in the Donegal Gaeltacht, he boarded at Castleknock College. He studied law at University College Dublin and went to King’s Inns to train as a barrister. He was called to the bar in 1949.

He met his wife-to-be, Annamaria Carloni, while on holidays on the Italian Riviera as a young barrister. An Italian university student studying languages, Anna was working as a hotel receptionist in Alassio as a summer job. The couple struck up a long courtship and she moved to Ireland to work as a teacher in Mount Anville Secondary School before they married in 1963 and had their three children. Their first family home was in Sutton and in 1969 they moved “up the hill” to their long-time home overlooking Dublin Bay near the Bailey lighthouse in Howth.

Mr Justice Flood was appointed to the High Court in 1991 and the following year he was the judge in the Lavinia Kerwick rape trial, which drew huge public scrutiny by dint of the fact that Kerwick became the first rape survivor in Ireland to go public on the national airwaves 24 hours after the man who had admitted what he had done walked free. Flood adjourned sentencing for a year, provided her attacker stayed out of trouble in that time, and then gave him a suspended sentence. The Kerwick case resulted in the introduction of victim-impact statements in court and the Director of Public Prosecutions being given the power to appeal the leniency of a sentence.

Mr Justice Flood was already past the normal pension age when he was appointed to the tribunal in November 1997. His son, Richard, said that his father enjoyed the minor celebrity that chairing the tribunal brought to him. “He enjoyed being recognised on Grafton Street,” said Richard, who remembers his father working late into the night in his study in the family home with opera music playing in the background.

Although not a regular on the Dublin social scene for lawyers, Mr Justice Flood was nonetheless renowned as a dapper dresser who drove an Alfa Romeo car. Richard Flood said that, outside of his work, his father preferred walking his Airedale terriers and latterly Bernese mountain dogs over the hill of Howth. He was chairman of the board of Sutton Park School — where his children and his grandchildren attended — for more than 20 years.

The family visited Anna’s family in Milan each year at the end of the legal term. On these long road trips across Europe, Mr Justice Flood carefully selected the best places to stay en route. Lovers of good food and opera, Feargus and Anna Flood regularly attended at the Wexford Opera Festival and enjoyed tours to opera productions in European capitals.

Mr Justice Flood suffered ill health for the last number of years during, which time he was lovingly cared for at home by Anna.

Feargus Flood is survived by Anna; his children Richard, Micheline and Suzi; and his grandchildren Killian, Robert, Sam and Alessia.