The Sheedy affair has given an unexpected topicality to the sixth and final report of the Working Group on a Courts Commission.
The group was set up by the rainbow coalition government in November 1995, under the chairmanship of Ms Justice Denham, with a brief to overhaul radically the administration of the courts.
It has presented five reports so far. The first, on the management and financing of the courts, recommended that a Courts Service Board should take over the running of the courts. This was translated into legislation, and last year the Courts Services Act was passed.
A transitional board, under the leadership of the chief executive-designate, Mr P.J. Fitzpatrick, is in place to oversee the handover of the courts from the Department of Justice, and the installation of an information technology system and other measures are already under way.
The second report was on case management and court management, the third, entitled "Towards the Courts Service", was essentially a report on the implementation of the earlier recommendations, the fourth report was on the chief executive of the Courts Service and the fifth was on the establishment of specially designated Drugs Courts.
The sixth report, published yesterday, has been with the Minister for Justice since last December. It deals with several issues not previously examined, but the one generating most interest and discussion is its recommendations on judicial conduct and ethics.
The report is prescient in highlighting the need to identify areas of concern and isolate conventions of judicial behaviour and conduct, with a view to drawing up a code of ethics, and establishing a complaints procedure.
The fact that the working group contained among its 12 members six senior judges, as well as the chairman of the Bar Council, the director-general of the Law Society and former attorney general Mr John Rogers ensured that its recommendations would be accepted by the judiciary and the legal profession as a whole when answers were required to meet the crisis sparked off by the Sheedy affair. Its firm underlining of the independence of the judiciary and the need for a self-regulating body reflects the preponderance of lawyers on the group.
But this sixth report also contains other issues of interest to the public and users of the courts. It addresses, though does not suggest any major changes to, the question of court sittings and vacations. It makes a number of practical suggestions to assist the press in reporting the courts, starting with the need to ensure court proceedings are properly audible. It also recommends that court listings and judgments be publicly available, suggesting wide use of the Internet.
The report's most radical proposals concern family law, long regarded as the poor relation of the legal system. Here it proposes the establishment of a family law division of the existing courts, and that work should start on setting up a system of regional family courts, with appropriate support services.
This report is entitled "Conclusion" and brings to an end the work of Ms Justice Denham and her committee. Its work has already been described as bringing about the biggest changes in the courts system since the foundation of the State, but the events of last week have focused more attention on its deliberations than any of its members would have expected when they began their work 3 1/2 years ago.