Circuit Court Judge James O’Donohoe’s description of cyclists as having become “a nightmare” in Dublin, made this week when slashing a damages award to an injured cyclist by 80 per cent, has led to a formal complaint against the judge to the Judicial Council.
The controversy has also involved a focus on the judge’s July 2012 conviction and €600 fine under section 12 of the Road Traffic Act 1994 over failing to provide a breath specimen at the request of a garda.
That conviction was recorded a decade after the appointment of the judge, a qualified solicitor, to the bench in 2002.
When he pleaded guilty before Clifden District Court to the offence, which happened on August 19th 2011 at Ballconneely, Clifden, there was no media in court, and the conviction was reported some days later after journalists learned of it.
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Unlike some other controversies concerning the behaviour of judges, such as that surrounding the attendance by Supreme Court judge Seamus Woulfe at a golf dinner in August 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic, Judge O’Donohoe’s case attracted little attention at the time. Unlike Woulfe, O’Donohue faced no calls from either judges or politicians for his removal from office.
Article 35.4 of the Constitution states that judges of the Supreme Court, Court of Appeal or the High Court shall not be removed from office except for “stated misbehaviour or incapacity” and then only upon resolutions passed by Dáil Éireann and by Seanad Éireann calling for their removal. This rule applies, under statute, to judges of the circuit and district courts.
A procedure for removal is set out in Standing Orders of both Houses of the Oireachtas.
No judge to date has been removed from office, with the effect the meaning of “stated misbehaviour or incapacity” in Article 34.1 has never had to be judicially interpreted.
Motions for removal which were considered or initiated against a small number of judges in the past never proceeded to a conclusion because the judges in question either resigned or retired.
A Supreme Court judge, Mr Justice Hugh O’Flaherty, and a High Court judge, Mr Justice Cyril Kelly resigned in 1999 after motions of removal were considered against them arising from the Sheedy affair. That concerned events leading to the release from prison of architect Philip Sheedy after serving two years of a four-year sentence imposed for reckless driving causing the death of Anne Ryan in 1996.
A removal motion was initiated in the Dáil in 2004 by the then minister for justice Michael McDowell against Circuit Court Judge Brian Curtin who had denied charges, brought after a Garda search of his home, of possession of child pornography. The case against him was struck out in 2004 on the basis the warrant used to search his home was invalid.
Curtin’s legal challenge over the Oireachtas process led to a Supreme Court decision he was entitled to full rights of constitutional justice and fair procedures during the process. He resigned on grounds of ill-health in 2006 before the motion was brought to a vote.
Until the Judicial Council Act 2019, Ireland was the only EU state without a formal process for disciplining judges. The Act provided for the establishment of the Judicial Council, comprising all judges here, with functions to include promoting and maintaining high standards of conduct among judges.
The Act introduced the first formal judicial misconduct complaint regime here, which came into operation in October 2022. To date, no complaint has been upheld against a judge.
The complaints system, overseen by the council’s independent Judicial Conduct Committee (JCC), provides any person who witnessed or was affected by judicial misconduct can make a complaint.
Judicial misconduct is conduct that constitutes a departure from acknowledged standards of judicial conduct and brings the administration of justice into disrepute.
The JCC cannot review a judge’s decision in a court case as that is a matter for the appeal courts. Complaints about conduct prior to the new complaints regime are inadmissible.
When deemed admissible, the JCC can seek informal resolution of a complaint or refer it to a panel of inquiry for formal investigation and hearing. If misconduct is found, the JCC may issue a reprimand, which may include a training requirement, or an admonishment. In the most serious cases, it may refer the matter to the minister for justice for the purpose of initiating the constitutional process for removal from office.
On Wednesday, the Labour Party submitted a formal complaint to the council over what its transport spokesman Ciaran Ahern TD described as Judge O’Donohoe’s “deeply problematic” remarks about cyclists.
Deputy Ahern claimed the judge’s comments exhibited “a clear perception of bias” against cyclists in his decision-making and were beyond what was necessary to determine the case before him.
Rather than cyclists having become a nightmare in Dublin, the reality is that being a cyclist “is often a nightmare”, he said. A total of 14 cyclists were killed on Irish roads in 2025, the highest number since 2017, he added.
