The dispensation of justice is an extremely fine balancing act

There were times over the last ten years that I spent more hours in the company of Judge Flann Brennan than I did with the Husband. Not that I minded, of course. Hard and all as it is to understand, Wednesdays spent in the district court in Dundalk are the highlight of my working week.

I recall when I successfully interviewed for this job, the one thing I asked the bossman was that I get to cover the district court. Before I arrived, it had been done by a colleague who was always very good at it and I was concerned that he may have been reluctant to give it up. It was like taking candy from a baby - I still remember his beaming smile as he told me that of course he didn’t mind, in fact I would be doing him a favour.

For the pair of us, it was a win-win situation, that has given me a lot of insight into people’s lives over the last ten years. It’s impossible to cover every single case in the paper nowadays - the court can sit up to three times a week in Dundalk, covering all the aspects of life such as family law and civil disputes of all kinds, but it is the criminal cases I try to focus on.

Sometimes, there can be over 100 cases listed on the criminal charge sheets, with a similar number as summonses. The lists have done nothing but get longer with each passing year.

In charge for the last 30 years of all these aspects, civil, criminal and family, and leaving Dundalk this week, was Judge Flann Brennan. It is nearly 20 years since I first sat in his courtroom, the old court number one in the building that underwent a major redevelopment in 2000 and reopened in 2003 as probably the most beautiful building in Dundalk.

Judge Brennan understands the law extremely well - he has seen it live and breathe, change and mutate, for three decades as a judge and many years before that as a lawyer. But more importantly than this, he understands people. For instance, he has sympathy for those who battle addiction and really wanted to try to shake the devils off their back.

He has a particular sympathy for women not only in family law cases, but also in domestic violence situations. He often used the word ‘coward’ to describe defendants found guilty of assault, stalking or harassment of women and children.

And he was the man for giving people the second chances, and, sometimes, the twenty-second chances. And while many people would not agree with his approach in this regard, Judge Brennan was always willing to give people the benefit of the doubt. More times than not, he would not criminalise those before him for the first time on minor public order offences, preferring to give them a sharp warning about their behaviour but letting them walk out, importantly, without a conviction to get on with their lives.

Judge Brennan is vehemently anti-drugs and hardly a week went by when he didn’t give what my colleagues and myself affectionately called: ‘ the talk’ about how drugs were a plague on society and how those involved in their supply would think nothing of killing and maiming for money.

And he was also very funny at times. There is room for humour in every Irish situation and when a solicitor was trying to ‘ enlighten’ Judge Brennan on a piece of law, the judge would say; ‘In the words of Tony Soprano, illuminate me then’.

Despite the many pressures on his time and patience, he remained convinced that everyone was entitled to a hearing, Even if he didn’t find in their favour, people felt they were listened to.

The dispensation of justice is an extremely fine balancing act. As a judge, you are never, ever going to please everyone, or sometimes anyone. But Judge Brennan consistently stuck to not only the law, but his own sense of humanity and decency to get justice dispensed in a tough town. I am by far not the only one who will miss being in his presence every week.