Shakespeare called as an expert witness

William Shakespeare has been a familiar figure in Irish political controversy, ever since he was famously implicated in Charles Haughey's resignation speech to the Dail.

So it was no surprise when he turned up, twice, in the High Court yesterday, on a day when Liam Lawlor became the first politician to receive a jail sentence arising from the tribunals.

Called as an expert witness by Mr Justice Smyth, Mr Shakespeare first provided a sorry comment on the nature of Mr Lawlor's evidence to the Flood tribunal. "Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill," the judge quoted, from Macbeth, as he reminded us that the seeds for yesterday's harvest had been germinating since 1998.

Then, with barely enough time for a scene change, the bard was on the stand again.

As his ruling neared its climax, the judge admitted it was a "trite saying" that everybody must be equal before justice. So, throwing away the book of trite sayings and reaching again for Shakespeare, he quoted Measure for Measure: "We must not make a scarecrow of the law, setting it up to fear the birds of prey, and let it keep one shape, till custom make it their perch and not their terror."

But the judge may have learned more from Shakespeare than quotations.

His judgment was 90 minutes long, about play length. It featured a long slow build-up, like Hamlet, as he went through the less quotable evidence from the Flood tribunal, chapter and verse. But he more than made up for it in the finale, which had the packed audience in Court 12 first catching its breath and then whispering under it.

Having studied the judge without any obvious expression until then, Mr Lawlor too narrowed his gaze as he heard himself indicted for acting in "blatant defiance" of the court orders.

His eyebrows knitted a frown across his forehead when the judge continued along ominous lines: "That he did so as a citizen is a disgrace. That he did so as a public representative is a scandal." And he was flushed and clearly shaken when the judge added that his actions not only deserved but demanded a custodial sentence, the first seven days to be "actually" served in jail.

He had already fined Mr Lawlor a maximum £10,000 and finished by awarding maximum costs to the tribunal team.

Counsel for same, Mr Frank Clarke - who, as is his custom, had been flipping his pen in the air at varying frequencies throughout the ruling, was up to 30 flips a minute by the end, as the extent of the victory became evident.

His cool apparently restored despite the prospect of a week in jail, Mr Lawlor chatted with his lawyers before going for coffee in the court's basement bar. No more than the law, however, he was not in a mood to be made a scarecrow, nor even a perch.

With a number of possible exits open to him, journalism's birds of prey were circling the Four Courts - almost literally - when he came out. But he brushed the questions away repeatedly as he made for his car.

And then, as the interrogators persisted, he tersely addressed himself to one Bird in particular: "I'm making no comment, Charlie. And if I make no comment, you know what no comment means." The rest was silence. Or, as Shakespeare might have put it in the stage directions: "Exit, pursued by the media."