A considerate, patient and shrewd chief justice

Thomas Finlay
Born: September 17th, 1922
Died: December 3rd, 2017

Thomas Finlay, known as Tom, has died at the age of 95. He brought outstanding personal qualities of industry, intellect, integrity, judgment and courtesy to a career in law that culminated in serving as chief justice from 1985 to 1994.

Born in September 1922, he was the younger of two sons of Thomas Finlay, a Cavan-born barrister and Cumann na nGael TD whose death in 1932, at the age of 39, was a sorrow the younger Tom felt all his life. His great-uncle Fr Tom Finlay, the famous Jesuit, provided guidance. Young Tom and his more colourful elder brother Bill, who were day boys at Xavier School in Donnybrook, went on to board at Clongowes Wood College, in Co Kildare. Both became students at University College Dublin, where Tom was auditor of the Law Society.

Called to the Bar in 1944, Tom Finlay combined practice on the midland circuit with an interest in Fine Gael politics, and he was elected to the Dáil for Dublin South-Central in 1954. Losing his seat in 1957, he concentrated thereafter on the law but always displayed considerable respect for politicians and, as a judge, defended their prerogatives.

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He cemented his reputation as a leader of the Bar in the arms trial in 1970, when Charles Haughey and three others were tried for conspiracy

He became a senior counsel in 1961. A stocky man, he eschewed the swagger of the fashionable barrister but was admired for his thoroughness and as a doughty fighter who served all clients equally well. He cemented his reputation as a leader of the Bar in the arms trial in 1970, when Charles Haughey and three others were tried for conspiracy to import arms illegally into the State. Appearing for Capt Kelly, who was central to the alleged conspiracy, he discredited the minister of defence James Gibbons, the chief prosecution witness. All the accused had to be acquitted.

In 1971 Finlay was briefed by the Fianna Fáil government when it responded to the ill treatment of detainees by security forces in Northern Ireland by charging Britain with torture before the European Commission of Human Rights. His argument convinced the commission that the complaint should be ruled admissible despite the availability of a domestic remedy to the victims in the courts of Northern Ireland.

The government showed its appreciation by appointing Finlay to the High Court. As a trial judge he was outstanding: considerate, patient and shrewd in his assessments of fact. His promotion to become president of the court in 1974 was widely welcomed.

Finlay succeeded as chief justice in 1985. His judicial talents were less suited to an appellate role; devoid of vanity or self-importance, he was not one of those judges who see their judgments as personal monuments; avoiding principled stands, he focused more on seeing right done in the case before him than in producing elegant expositions of the law that would provide future guidance.

His judgment in the X case, in 1992, permitting an underage pregnant girl who threatened suicide to go to England for an abortion, was characteristic in its pragmatism. He realised that on such issues the courts could not afford to outrage public opinion.

He called Erris in Co Mayo, where he had a lodge, 'God's own country'

Instinctively deferential to the executive and legislature except where individual rights were infringed, Finlay was in a minority on the Supreme Court in 1986 upholding legislation giving effect to the Single European Act. If his view had prevailed the country would have been spared a succession of referendums in subsequent decades to approve amendments to the treaties of the European Communities.

His respect for individual rights was evidenced by a unanimous verdict of the Supreme Court making absolute the rule that evidence obtained as a result of a breach of a constitutional right was inadmissible.

Although he had felt the strain of overwork in his last years as chief justice, he went on working in retirement. He reported on a riot of British fans at a soccer international in Lansdowne Road, on the misdeeds of the Irish Blood Transfusion Service and on the newspaper industry. He chaired commissions setting out arguments for and against amendments of the Constitution for the benefit of voters. He returned to the game of rugby, which he had played at UCD, to serve on a tribunal of appeal for players found to have used banned substances.

Finlay was a companionable, tactful man, charitable in his judgments of others. His main relaxations were shooting and fishing, usually around Erris, in Co Mayo, where he had a lodge. He had first been taken to the district by his late father when he was a boy; “God’s own country”, he called it. Remaining remarkably fit into old age, he was a devoted carer to his wife, Alice, through years of frailty before her death, in 2012. He enjoyed his numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren. He remained, as he had always been, a man inspired by an unostentatious religious faith.

Finlay is survived by his children Mary, Tom, John, Joan and Ruth. Two of his children followed him as practising barristers; Mary has just been appointed to the Supreme Court, while John is a senior counsel.