Tributes have been paid to the High Court judge, Mr Justice Peter Shanley, who died suddenly yesterday.
Mr Justice Shanley, who was 52, suffered a heart attack while attending a judges' conference in Oporto, Portugal.
He is survived by his wife Marian and five children.
The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, said Mr Justice Shanley had excelled as a High Court judge since he was appointed to the bench in 1996. "While the results of his brilliant career will still be there for all to see, public life in Ireland will be diminished by the fading of this particular star of national life in general and legal prominence in particular."
Mr Ahern noted that, as a Fine Gael councillor for many years and during his term as chairman of Dun Laoghaire Corporation, Mr Justice Shanley had represented his constituents with "great commitment and vision".
The Fine Gael leader, Mr Bruton, said he had learned of the death with "profound regret and great sadness". Speaking from Brussels last night, he described Mr Justice Shanley as a "highly respected, distinguished lawyer, judge and former Fine Gael member".
In a 23-year career as a barrister, Mr Justice Shanley enjoyed considerable success and served as chairman and vice-chairman of the Bar Council. Although his early inclination was towards criminal cases, and he obtained a diploma in criminology from Cambridge University, it was in the areas of chancery and commercial law that he eventually specialised.
Among the high-profile cases he worked on was the Dunne family litigation in the early 1990s and one of the biggest commercial cases in the history of the State, involving AIB and Ernst and Whinney. He also appeared for the Attorney General in the X case in 1992, and for the State in Senator Des Hanafin's challenge to the divorce referendum result in 1996.
As a judge, he presided recently over the National Irish Bank case, and was in charge of much of the court's insolvency work.
A colleague, Mr Adrian Hardiman SC, last night described the deceased as "a barrister of exceptional ability". "He was a succinct individual and an intellectual conservative who seemed to enjoy the arcane points of the law rather than the more headline-grabbing areas."
Another colleague described him as "a powerful intellect who could see the point in cases of fantastic complexity. He would have been a certainty for the Supreme Court and might even have become Chief Justice."
After attending Belvedere College in Dublin, Mr Justice Shanley studied law at UCD. He was called to the Bar in 1968, but worked as an academic in UCD's law department for a number of years. In 1972, at the age of 26, he became the youngest chairman of Dun Laoghaire Corporation.
He became a Senior Counsel in 1982, and was appointed to the High Court in March 1996.
