Senator Ivor Callely’s legal team has told the High Court the Seanad committee that recently investigated his travel expenses had portrayed him as a “pariah”.
Mr Callely’s senior counsel Michael O’Higgins was applying for a judicial review of the committee's findings. The application was adjourned by Mr Justice Seán Ryan.
It resumed this afternoon before being adjourned again. It will be mentioned before the President of the
High Court on September 28th, with a view to a full hearing being held on October 4th.
In July, the Committee on Members’ Interests of Seanad Éireann found Mr Callely misrepresented his normal place of residence for the purposes of claiming expenses.
A report from the committee said Mr Callely should be suspended from the service of the Seanad for 20 days and have his salary withheld because the misrepresentation was done “intentionally and was of a grave nature”.
At the time, Mr Callely said he “strenuously” rejected the report’s findings and insisted his claims for expenses from his house at Kilcrohane in west Cork were validly made.
Mr O’Higgins said Mr Callely had “literally not had a day's rest since that finding” of the committee. He said Mr Callely had been portrayed as “a chancer, a rogue, a thoroughly despicable person” who had “ripped off” the State to the sum of some €80,000.
The committee’s findings had been “enormously damaging” for Mr Callely, Mr O’Higgins said. His only source of income had stopped.
Mr Calley’s legal team is arguing the committee confused the meaning of the definition of a senator’s normal place of residence; that committee member Independent Senator Joe O’Toole refused to apply the definition, and the committee had subsequently requested the definition be reviewed and made more robust.
Gerard Hogan, senior counsel for the committee, sought leave to speak and asked that the application for judicial review be adjourned to be heard along with a full hearing of the matter in advance of the resumption of the Seanad at the end of the month. Mr Hogan said if Mr Callely could turn up and vote and take part in other Seanad business it would be "most unsatisfactory and disruptive of proceedings of discipline".
Mr Justice Ryan indicated he would be in favour of a “telescoped hearing”. He said with the “best will in the world”, proceedings might not conclude before the end of the month.
Mr Callely is taking the case against the committee and its seven members: Seanad Cathaoirleach Pat Moylan; Camillus Glynn (FF); Denis O’Donovan (FF); Frances Fitzgerald (Fine Gael); Joe O’Toole (Independent); Alex White (Labour) and Dan Boyle (Green Party).
Mr Callely resigned from Fianna Fáil last month after a special party committee refused to allow him an extension of time to prepare a defence to its investigation into his conduct.
