Woulfe to finally don his judge’s wig after courting controversy
SÉAMUS Woulfe has been listed to begin work as a Supreme Court judge for the first time next month – almost seven months after his nomination.
However, the controversial former attorney general is still not sitting on the bench to hear any appeals.
The legal diary shows Judge Woulfe as being listed to join two colleagues in chambers, where they will deliberate on which appeals the court will agree to hear.
Mr Woulfe had been sidelined for three months at the request of Chief Justice Frank Clarke, following the fallout from the Golfgate scandal.
On February 4, 12 and 19, he will hear leave applications alongside Judge Donal O’Donnell and Judge Peter Charleton, and their decisions will be published at a later date on the courts’ website.
Judge Woulfe was appointed to his judicial post, with a €257,000 salary, last year, after leaving his position as attorney general when Micheál Martin took over as Taoiseach.
That appointment has since come in for intense public scrutiny, with Justice Minister Helen McEntee saying former taoiseach Leo Varadkar had told her Mr Woulfe would make a good judge.
Mr Woulfe’s own judgment was called into question when it emerged he had attended the Oireachtas Golf Society event in August. Eighty others attended, divided by a screen, at a time when public health guidelines limited gatherings to 50 people.
The Chief Justice said in November that he thought Judge Woulfe should resign, to avoid ‘continuing serious damage to the judiciary’.
Judge Clarke said the ‘cumulative effect’ of Golfgate, including Judge Woulfe’s attitude to the whole affair, had led him to his stark assessment. He said Judge Woulfe had shown a ‘lack of insight and understanding’ of public reaction on serious matters which affected public trust.
In a letter to Judge Woulfe, following a meeting between the pair, Judge Clarke reprimanded his colleague, but he said he had no legal power to impose any formal sanction on a member of the judiciary.
However, he said that Judge Woulfe would not be listed to sit as a judge until February 2021, and asked him to waive three months of his salary – equating to around €56,000.
Judge Woulfe refused to resign. However, he said: ‘As a newly appointed judge of the Supreme Court, my ill-judged acceptance of the invitation, and subsequent attendance at the dinner, occasioned offence and hurt to the public and damage to the court and this is a cause of profound regret to me.’
He said he was determined to work with the Supreme Court in every way he could to remedy the matter.
He added that he would accept the reprimand and three-month delay, and volunteered to pay three months of his salary to a charity.
‘Lack of insight or understanding’