Remarks by Senator Michael McDowell SC

• Date: 01 January 2023

197

Remarks by

SENATOR MICHAEL MDOWELL SC*

Mr Chairman, and Members of the Society and Fellow Guests,

It is an honour to be invited to speak here this evening. And I want to thank Joshua,

for his kindness in inviting me.

I want to say that listening to Michael Peart and Minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill,

I come to the topic from a somewhat dierent perspective.

Because I have been involved in the appointment of judges, I know the interstices

of the process and a fair amount about how individual decisions are made.

I was glad to hear that Michael Peart got that phone call so early on in the post

2002 regime - and that it came from me. If he hadn’t applied to be appointed, it

probably would have been the case that he would have received a dierent phone

call to say: ‘For God’s sake, would you apply?’ Because the then Attorney General

Rory Brady and I were absolutely convinced from the word go that Michael Peart

would be the rst solicitor appointee to the High Court. I’m very glad that by

applying to be appointed he saved us from having to head hunt him.

e appointment of solicitors to the High Court bench has to be seen in a changing

professional environment. Michael mentioned that in the 1850s, there were roughly

300 solicitors. I think there were 120 benchers in the late 18th century in King’s

Inns. So the legal professions were completely dierently constituted in the late

18th century and in the early 19th century. And solicitors were originally regarded

as an appendage of Kings Inns. ey found that the second-class treatment they got

required a remedy, and they got it.

But even by the time I became a barrister in 1974, I had to sign a memorial. I

should add that it was agreed that I would be apprenticed to John Temple Lang in

McCann Fitzgerald where my Uncle Jack was a partner. My father dissuaded me.

He said, ‘I think, Mike, would you prefer to be a barrister?’

And he brought me up to King’s Inns and around the courts, and I said ‘Okay, I’ll

think about it.’ And I shared my father’s doubts as to whether I was a suciently

organised character to be a good solicitor.

* Senator Michael McDowell SC is a member of Seanad Éireann, representing the National

University of Ireland. A former Tánaiste, Minister for Justice and Attorney General, his term as

Minister for Justice coincided with Mr Justice Peart’s appointment to the High Court. Along with

a prominent career at the Bar, Senator McDowell is a noted commentator on the judicial selection

process, in both the media and the Oireachtas.