Golfgate judge ‘did not break any law’

Report says resignation would be disproportionate

SUPREME Court j u dge Séamus Woulfe ‘did not break any law or knowingly breach any guidelines’, the former chief justice Susan Denham has said in her report on his attendance at the controversial Golfgate dinner.

She said that it would be ‘unjust and disproportionate’ for him to resign for attending the Oireachtas Golf Society event in August while the country was under coronavirus restrictions.

Their attendance at the event cost former EU commissioner Phil Hogan and former agriculture minister Dara Calleary their jobs.

Justice Denham’s report includes a transcript of her meeting with Judge Woulfe in which he said that the media were hoping he would resign in the aftermath of the dinner because it would have ‘added fuel to the fire’ and the controversy was like ‘a bomb had gone off ’.

He also said it would have been ‘ridiculous’ for him to phone the Supreme Court Chief Justice to seek his advice in advance of the dinner.

‘Ah, no. I think that would have been ridiculous, with respect, Judge, I really do,’ Judge Woulfe told Ms Denham.

‘You know, I don’t think an adult

‘I think that would have been ridiculous’

person on holidays in that kind of sense would go bothering the Chief Justice at that stage. Particularly there was nothing to spark off bother, in my mind, that there was any question going back to him.’

Ms Denham noted that Judge Woulfe played in a Bar Golf Society outing in Baltray, Co. Louth, on Saturday, July 25 ‘with a large group of barristers and judges’.

‘This was the first golf society outing that he had played in since the easing of the Covid-19 pandemic restrictions, and on that occasion they ate in groups of four as they came in off the golf course. They did not eat together later as a bigger group,’ she noted

Her report includes an assessment by an engineer, who was tasked with finding out if the layout of guests at the Oireachtas event in Clifden was in breach of guidelines that a maximum of 50 people could meet in one place.

Guests were seated i n two function rooms or ‘suites’ with a dividing panel between them. The engineer found that ‘ guidelines issued on behalf of the Government, Fáilte Ireland and the Irish Hotels Federation expressly permitted multiple such gatherings in separately defined spaces’.

Ms Denham, however, criticised him for not ‘ considering separately the propriety, or if there would be an appearance of impropriety, for a judge of the Supreme Court to attend a celebratory dinner in a public place while there is a pandemic in the State’.

But she also noted significant mitigating factors, including that Judge Woulfe didn’t break any law or knowingly breach any guidelines on August 19, 2020, the day of the Clifden golf dinner.

Ms Denham wrote that she believed ‘Justice Woulfe placed reliance bona fide on the assurances of the organisers of the dinner that the Covid-19 regulations were complied with’. She also said there was evidence before her that the Station House Hotel, where the event took place, was relying on the guidelines for reopening hotels and guesthouses, issued in June 2020 and which were endorsed by the Government, Fáilte Ireland and the IHF, and which applied on the day of the Clifden event.

She said she didn’t believe his attendance at the dinner was a breach of the separation of powers between politicians and the judiciary.

‘Judicial vigilance, to avoid actions which might give rise to a risk of controversy which could impact on the Supreme Court, is an important matter,’ she said, adding ‘it would have been better if [he] had not attended the dinner’.

In an appendix, she published a transcript of her interview with Judge Woulfe. In one passage, when she asked him: ‘Do you accept that your presence at the dinner may have created a public controversy which could have adversely affected the Supreme Court?’, he replied: ‘OK, that’s a difficult question. In one sense, I suppose that is so, that for the media to also have the chance to bring down a judge as an extra fuel to the fire and it did add to the controversy that was there.’

Ms Denham wrote that, in all the circumstances, she is of the opinion that there was ‘cogent evidence that Justice Woulfe did not seek advice on, or consider, whether it was appropriate for a member of the Supreme Court to attend the dinner.

The Supreme Court said in a statement yesterday it accepted the conclusions and would now move to the informal resolution recommended by Ms Denham.