Pat Leahy: What does Golfgate verdict teach us? We all lost the plot a bit

Five reflections on the “Golfgate” verdicts:

1 The prosecution might have folded like a bad soufflé in the face of the judge's view of the attendees of the dinner as fine upstanding gentlemen, but that doesn't mean it was a bad idea to take it in the first place.

Often prosecutions don’t proceed unless there is a very high expectation of a conviction, but that clearly wasn’t the situation in this case. A conviction was always going to be difficult to achieve. But I think it was right to proceed with the prosecution because it demonstrated that nobody is above the law.

However, the idea – widely canvassed at the time – that the Oireachtas Golf Society was a gathering of the elite was always ridiculous when you looked at the guest list. There were two TDs there, and seven sitting senators. Most of them hadn't played an important role in Irish politics in years, if ever. It was more a slow-moving agglomeration of old farts than the all-powerful elite at play. Donie Cassidy has certainly enjoyed a colourful career as a showband manager, hotelier, politician and businessman – but a shadowy presence who pulls the strings of power from behind the scenes he is not.

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Nonetheless, it was important to show that the politicians and their pals are subject to the law, just like anyone else. The untouchable elite vs the virtuous common people is one of the most powerful tropes of contemporary politics, but it took a hit with this prosecution.

2 The verdicts are a matter for the judge, who listened to all the evidence and made her decision: that's why we insist upon the independence of the judiciary. But judicial decisions are not above criticism or discussion. And some of the comments by Judge Mary Fahy were, frankly, pretty odd. "They were all responsible people who would not have gone to a dinner unless they felt comfortable and unless the organisers had not put in place all that was required to make it safe," she said of attendees of the dinner.

This is a unique way of looking at it. Surely the question was whether the people charged had broken the law, not what the lads at the dinner thought about it, and whether they were fine fellas or not?

The learned judge also observed: “Unfortunately, very good people lost very good jobs and very good contracts [amid the Golfgate controversy] and just to clarify, I didn’t make my decision based on that.”

This is peculiar, I think. Why mention it if it had nothing to do with her decision? The people with the very good jobs lost them because of the requirements of politics – which are very often vastly different to the standards required by the law. The suggestion appears to be that a monstrous injustice has been done to everyone who was forced to resign in the wake of the controversy. That is making a judgment on a much broader question than the one which was at play in the courtroom.

It is also, in the case of Phil Hogan, whose job was the biggest to be lost as a result of the controversy, rather misremembering things: Hogan lost his job not because of Golfgate but because his changing accounts of his perambulations around the country in advance of the dinner caused a complete loss of trust in him on the part of his boss in Brussels.

3 The actions of the people who organised the dinner were not – we know now – in breach of the law. But they were certainly unwise and almost certainly wrong in the context of the time – a country still under Covid restrictions and which had only recently emerged from a harsh lockdown during which people had been unable to attend funerals, see their relatives, and so on. The separation of the dinner into two rooms divided by a partition – accepted by the learned judge as making it two events – seems to me, and I think will seem to many people, to be a contrivance to get around the rules.

If a couple getting married had proposed a similar arrangement, promising to put the bride’s family on one side and the groom’s on the other and to only open the partition a bit for the speeches, I wonder would the hotel have said: “Fire ahead.” I have my doubts.

4 We all probably lost the plot a bit about the whole affair. While it was certainly bad behaviour – not criminal, but bad – did it really merit the national paroxysm that followed? Perhaps it was understandable because people had been through such a difficult time during the lockdown and suddenly they saw politicians – whose function is sometimes to be a focus for public anger – appearing to flout the rules, and they demanded retribution. I think the resignations were absolutely appropriate. But I also think we should beware the certitude of mobs. We are terribly prone to all suddenly thinking the same thing.

5 Obvious lesson: if you're in trouble, lawyer up. The dazzling array of senior counsel that descended upon the Clifden District Court was a sight to behold. One would never suggest that the learned trial judge was influenced by the presence of the Law Library heavyweights, but my guess is that their great legal experience did the defendants' case no harm.

Mind you, I would have never thought that the “Donie Cassidy said it would be grand” defence would be so effective, but maybe that just shows you how little I know about the law.

While our justice system is generally fair, it has its weak points. And whatever your case, it always helps to have a good lawyer – or several.