TRIBUTES were paid in the High Court yesterday to a retiring judge.
Colleagues, practitioners and members of the court staff gathered in Court Number 4 to hear the tributes to Mr Justice Esmond Smyth, including from Paul O’Higgins SC, on behalf of the Bar Council, solicitor James McGuill, for the Law Society, and Margaret O’Neill, for the Courts Service.
Mr Justice Smyth was appointed a Circuit Court judge in 1992, and made president of that court in 1998. From 2005 he also sat as an additional judge of the High Court and since 2008 has been chairman of the Residential Institutions Redress Board, in which role he will continue.
Later yesterday, the president of the High Court, Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns, paid tribute to Irish Examiner High Court reporter Vivion Kilfeather on his retirement after a career of 43 years with the paper. Mr Kilfeather worked as deputy editor in the Dublin office, industrial relations correspondent and Dáil reporter before spending more than a decade as a court reporter.