Barry Clifford: Hugh O’ Flaherty- A Very Flawed Judgment

In making a judgment about keeping a sense of proportion over controversies that rocked the Gardai, I can only conclude that Hugh O’ Flaherty is still a very flawed judge without robes, and proves it when it to comes the Irish Police judging by his article in the Irish Independent today titled: ‘We Must Keep A Sense Of Proportion Over Controversies That Rocked The Gardai.’

Flaherty was once a Supreme Court judge but fell off his perch when he was found to have corrupted the law when he interfered with a criminal case that he had no connection with: to get a drunken driver, that had connections that included Hugh, who ran down and killed a mother of two in his high performance car while he was as drunk as you could be without being in a coma, get out of a free hotel early. His initial light sentence of four years saw him in an open prison after six months with parole due in another eighteen, was about to get lighter, and he was released shortly after those first 24 weeks of free room and board.

When Flaherty resigned before being pushed he admitted no wrong. And sure why would he because he explained it all in a radio interview later to the uneducated masses that Ireland’s justice system was more about who you knew rather than what you had done. Bless his heart. He also claims he was moved by compassion to release the man which apparently did not extend to the motherless children of the deceased or her husband. In his latest article it seems that Flaherty has learned little since 1999.

In it Hugh tries to make wrong sound right with disjointed comparisons that do not stack up. The preamble of what he really wants to say though he gets there in the end, much like an atheist trying to convince you that he is not one when found praying to a wooden statute in a church. 

“I am not disputing that favouritism is ever right.” Hugh tells us which is exactly what got him into trouble in the first place and which he later conceded was the culture of law and order anyway. Well it still is. He agrees with Callinan that the penalty points system was not meant to be a revenue-raising exercise yet the dog in the street knew otherwise though pedigrees with connections would not have to pay. So, like Callinan, Flaherty interprets the rules as only they see fit and little else. Law and order was devised with the expectation that it was justice for all but they really know better. If it was only about the penalty points it would have been over before it begun, for far from that sorry saga the exposure of a greater rotting and long festering malaise emerged: A Police Force long decaying from within. Prod it a little and the force will react; prod it from within and the force will destroy you. Or so it hoped yet it was hope that emerged for the citizen.

While Hugh laments in the closing of his article about the force’s morale, he tells us that they have met big challenges before but he still fails to grasp the nettle: It is not morale that is at stake but morality sprinkled with a strong peppering of at least a scent of Justice For All.

By Barry Clifford