There are now nine people serving life sentences for murder arising out of convictions in the Central Criminal Court sitting in Limerick between July and December last year, according to Mr Justice Carney. His comments are contained in a paper intended for but not delivered to a conference in Dublin at the weekend.
Mr Justice Carney pulled out of the conference on the criminal justice system because the Chief Justice, Mr Justice Keane, who was due to open it, objected to some of its contents.
Mr Justice Carney had been supportive of the conference from the outset, according to Ms Liz Walsh, one of the organisers and a student at the King's Inns. He had indicated he would speak about the experience of the Central Criminal Court in Limerick, where it sat for some months last year, on his initiative.
She then got a phone call from Mr Justice Carney on Thursday evening to say he was pulling out of the conference because the Chief Justice objected to his paper, and was not prepared to attend if he delivered it as it stood.
According to a spokesman for the Chief Justice, Mr Justice Keane objected to three elements in the paper: the fact that it referred to matters in the recent past or still current; the fact that these matters may present themselves before the courts in another form; and his concern that judges should not talk in public about cases they had presided over.
The Chief Justice contacted the President of the High Court about his concerns, and these were conveyed to Mr Justice Carney by Mr Justice Finnegan. Attempts to resolve the situation continued on Friday morning, but these were unsuccessful, according to Ms Walsh, who contacted Mr Brendan Nix SC and asked him to fill in. "We were very grateful for Paul Carney's support and to Brendan Nix for stepping in at the 11th hour," she said.
In his paper, which has been seen by The Irish Times, Mr Justice Carney said that there were so many reasons advanced as to why the Central Criminal Court hearings in Limerick would not work that he was reminded of the failed advertising campaign for the doomed product Guinness Light, "They said it couldn't be done".
There was not the slightest difficulty in empanelling a jury for the first murder trial in the city, he said, and it produced a guilty verdict, as did the second murder trial, which went equally smoothly. A rape trial produced a unanimous acquittal.
Then the trial of five men for the murder of Kieran Keane and the attempted murder of Owen Treacy occurred. Mr Justice Carney wrote in his paper: "This was a case entirely dependent on the evidence of one witness who was being, and still is, perfectly openly threatened with death." He said that the county registrar conveyed his concern to the Garda that the security should be as low-key as possible to avoid causing anxiety to the jury panel, and to future jury panels.
However, the area around the courthouse was cordoned off, a Garda boat and water unit were deployed, a Garda helicopter was in the air, sniffer dogs were on the ground, snipers were on the roof and the jury panel were searched with metal detectors.
"The county registrar found a significant increase in the number of medical certificates presented and for women they mainly stated 'stress and anxiety'," according to Mr Justice Carney. The case was transferred to Dublin, where a jury was empanelled without the slightest difficulty, despite "hysterical press coverage about the failure to empanel a jury in Limerick".