The report of the Chief Justice into the circumstances surrounding the Philip Sheedy case will be published today and will be "highly critical" of the two judges at the centre of the controversy, according to informed sources.
The contents of the 50-page report are to be made public after Cabinet gives clearance for publication at an early morning special meeting. It is understood the Chief Justice, Mr Justice Hamilton, specifically states it was not within his remit to issue recommendations in his report.
However, he does reach conclusions which are said to be hard-hitting.
They are explicitly critical of the Supreme Court judge Mr Justice Hugh O'Flaherty, and the High Court judge Mr Justice Cyril Kelly, for the manner in which they dealt with the issues raised throughout the case. "It is a strong report," one source said. "There is nothing vague about its conclusions." Conflicts have apparently emerged between the accounts provided by Mr Justice Kelly - who suspended three years of Sheedy's four-year jail sentence - and those of Sheedy's counsel, Mr Luigi Rea. According to the report, Judge Kelly takes issue with Mr Rea's assertion that an updated psychological report should be prepared on Sheedy.
Significant differences are reported also to have arisen between the versions given by Mr Justice Kelly and Judge Joseph Mathews, who in October 1997 sentenced Sheedy to prison for dangerous driving causing death.
In order to secure privilege for the report, it will be handed over to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Equality and Women's Affairs, and then published this afternoon. The Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, yesterday wrote to the chairman of the committee, Mr Eoin Ryan TD, asking the group to consider the findings at today's meeting.
According to Mr Ryan, there was great anxiety to get the report into the public domain without delay. However, because of the unprecedented nature of the matter, the Government is uncertain as to what approach it should adopt after considering the report.
"The absence of hard recommendations leaves us with a problem of how to deal with this," a senior source said. "It is possible that we may have to ask the Chief Justice to look at this again. Since he states that his remit does not allow him to make a more extensive inquiry, he may need more powers. But the mood [in Government] is very much that this is a problem for the judiciary."
Meanwhile, in a further twist to the saga, Mr Justice O'Flaherty contacted RTE's Morning Ireland programme yesterday to say he felt compelled to take the unusual step of issuing a public statement to "categorically deny" an Irish Independent report that he told the Chief Justice he would "take his fight to the Oireachtas if there was a motion for his impeachment".
The judge stressed that no such conversation ever took place "and no assertion was made" by him that he would fight any impeachment move. Since he had not yet received a copy of Mr Justice Hamilton's report, he could not comment further, he added.
With tension mounting over the imminent publication of the report, Opposition politicians consulted Mr Ryan on how to handle the document at today's Oireachtas committee meeting.
Fine Gael's spokesman on institutional and public reform, Mr Jim Mitchell, said the report should set out the facts as the Chief Justice had established and "any contradictions that he discovered".