The Golfgate report is excruciating reading for Justice Woulfe. I’m still troubled by a number of questions...

THE final act in the Golfgate debacle played out this week. Retired Judge Susan Denham produced her report into the appropriateness of whether recently appointed Supreme Court Judge Séamus Woulfe should have attended the Oireachtas golf outing held last August.

She said that he had done nothing involving impropriety which would justify calls for his resignation and that such a step would be unjust and disproportionate. Nonetheless, the report must have made excruciating reading for Judge Woulfe and his judicial colleagues. Her report contained many criticisms of the former attorney general. For instance, she queried how he did not consider the propriety, or if there would be an appearance of i mpropriety, f or a Supreme Court judge to attend a celebratory dinner in a public place during a pandemic.

In his interview with Judge Denham, he referred to himself as normally being a ‘news addict’. But, Judge Woulfe said that, around the time of the event, he had been on holidays and hadn’t tuned i n to the daily news. Because of this, he apparently was not aware of any statement by the Taoiseach announcing a tightening of the restrictions.

At the time, there was a general sense that the health experts were advising the Government to bring i n more stringent restrictions. One did not need to be a legal eagle or an experienced politician to appreciate that. ‘Ignorantia legis neminem excusat’ is Latin for the legal maxim that ‘ignorance of the law excuses no one’. Quite often, defendants in court claim that they didn’t know a particular law existed. But such a defence falls on the deaf ears of the judiciary.

It has to be accepted, as reported by Judge Denham, that Judge Woulfe did not break any laws or breach any regulations.

However, most of the public would find it hard to believe that someone of Judge Woulfe’s standing was apparently ignorant of the spirit of the restrictions, at that particular time.

Confronted

But, as I have said in this column before, once the participants of the golf outing were confronted with the layout of the dinner, did it not occur to them, in the interests of their own safety and that of others, irrespective of regulations, to turn around and go home?

Others, including Enda Kenny and Dick Spring, apparently, wisely made a decision not to go to the dinner after their round of golf. One must question the judgment of those who continued on to dinner.

I cannot put it better than the man named Cormac who, shortly after the news about Golfgate broke, called RTÉ’s Liveline. He had been in the hotel for a family meal on the same night as the dinner. He recognised most of the leading figures congregating in the foyer. He told listeners that when he realised that the gathering was for a celebratory dinner, rather than a political briefing between TDs and then EU Commissioner Phil Hogan, he immediately thought that there could be trouble ahead.

His curiosity made him peek at the table layout. When he saw Judge Woulfe among the gathering group, he said that the first thing that came to his mind was: ‘Why is he here? He’s the man who drew up most of the regulations that we are all trying to adhere to.’

Cormac concluded that ‘ anyone with any sense at all – if they had walked into the room, would have just looked around, and said “I’m getting out of here”’.

On another point, Judge Denham didn’t think Judge Woulfe’s dining with ministers, TDs and senators, gave rise to a breach of the separation of powers between politicians and the judiciary.

There would be many who would tend to disagree with her on this point. It is quite conceivable that someone in Judge Woulfe’s position could be r equired t o decide in t he Supreme Court on the constitutionality of a piece of legislation promoted by the very Oireachtas members he was privately dining with, say, the night before the court hearing.

A counter-argument could be made that judges should not be expected to lock themselves away from society. But it is vital that judges do not put themselves in a position where there is even a scintilla of compromise by their actions.

Indeed, another thing occurred to me reading the transcript attached to Judge Denham’s report: Judge Woulfe said that, on the day after the event, he began to get phone calls and texts from journalists asking him for a comment about his attendance at the event.

Vigilance

The question arises in my mind, how did journalists have the personal phone details of a Supreme Court judge?

Surely, once he was appointed, Judge Woulfe should have known of the need to change his phone in order to ensure complete ‘arm’s length’ from journalists, politicians and the like. Hopefully, he has done so in the meantime!

Judge Denham said there were ‘significant mitigating factors’ in favour of Judge Woulfe. She said he was a newly appointed judge who did not have the benefit of a formal induction into the ways of the Supreme Court. Intriguingly, she said his ‘vigilance was not yet honed into the

Judicial sphere’! And yet, Woulfe was a senior barrister of long experience. More crucially, he had been the attorney general who only recently was responsible for devising most of the regulations governing the restrictions.

Reports from the weekend suggest that some of Woulfe’s judicial colleagues are none too pleased with the turn of events, in that they tend to copper-fasten the perception that there is one standard for the general public and another one for the ‘great and the good’.

One thing is certain from this sorry debacle. Politicians are subject to much more summary judgment than most other sections of Irish society. They, unlike the judiciary, are subject to constant media scrutiny.

Politicians could learn a thing or two from the judiciary as to how to handle a crisis. The judges decided to instigate a review into Judge Woulfe’s action which bought time for him until the heat died down. By the time Judge Denham had reported, a huge amount of steam had gone out of the matter.

Indeed, many felt that a lot of the leading figures who fell on their swords had paid an inordinate price for their indiscretions. I ’ d say t hat t he political figures who lost out must be seething on reading the report and conclusions.

Many in Leinster House felt that Micheál Martin and Leo Varadkar were a bit too quick to wield the axe. But, such was the maelstrom of public opprobrium surrounding this matter, Martin and Varadkar didn’t have the same luxury of kicking the issue to touch, as the judiciary had.