‘Sheedy Affair’ lawyer new Law Society president
THE Law Society’s new president Michael Quinlan was one of three senior state legal officials who had to resign due to the infamous Sheedy Affair.
The scandal led to a Supreme Court judge, a High Court judge and Dublin Circuit Court Registrar Mr Quinlan quitting – after architect Philip Sheedy, who killed a mother of two while drunk driving, was freed early from prison following a series of judicial interventions.
When asked by the Irish Mail on Sunday about the scandal and about his ambitions for the Law Society, he said: ‘I don’t talk to the press.’ Mr Quinlan has kept a low profile since the affair, apart from an interview with the Dublin Solicitors’ Bar Association magazine, which hailed him as ‘the comeback kid’ before his latest appointment.
In October 1997, Sheedy was sentenced to four years after he pleaded guilty to dangerous driving causing death and driving under the influence of alcohol. Mother-of-two Anne Ryan was killed, while her husband and sons were injured. A year after sentencing, her husband learned that Sheedy had been seen locally.
It later emerged that Supreme Court Justice Hugh O’Flaherty was out walking in Dublin’s Herbert Park when he, ‘by chance’, met a neighbour, who was with Sheedy’s sister. The following day, he called Mr Quinlan into his chambers and sought his advice.
On November 12, 1998, without reference to the Director of Public Prosecutions, the gardaí or the Ryan family, Sheedy’s case was relisted and heard before High Court Judge Cyril Kelly, who suspended the remainder of the sentence.