The incident between a judge and a solicitor highlights, once again, the need for a body to hear complaints against judges, writes Carol Coulter.
The disagreement between solicitor Yvonne Bambury and Judge Patrick Brady should have been easily settled.
It arose last Saturday out of her seeking to have a bail application for a client heard yesterday rather than today, in order to avoid the client spending an extra day in custody.
When she insisted on seeking the hearing for the next available day, Judge Brady ordered her removal from the court. This led to other solicitors withdrawing from the court.
Whatever the merits of the positions adopted by Judge Brady and Ms Bambury, the exchange highlights the absence of a mechanism for court users - most frequently legal professionals - to bring grievances and complaints about members of the judiciary to a body empowered to deal with them.
Such a body has been talked about, and promised, for years and was part of the Programme for Government.
A Bill providing for it is scheduled to be published in the new year.
The Judicial Council Bill will be modelled on a four-year-old report from the last chief justice, Mr Justice Ronan Keane, and will provide for a judicial council which would represent the whole judiciary.
This will have a disciplinary committee, which will have lay representation on it.
And it will be able to hear complaints and impose a range of sanctions, up to and including a recommendation that the conduct of the judge complained of be referred to the Oireachtas for impeachment.
The Keane report recommends a wide range of lesser sanctions, including private and public reprimands. It did not recommend any conciliation mechanism.
The incident between Ms Bambury and Judge Brady on Saturday, which echoes an earlier incident between a solicitor and Judge Patwell in Cork five years ago, raises the issue of having a mechanism within the judicial system which could speedily move to resolve disputes of this nature without invoking the full powers of a formal inquiry by the judicial ethics and conduct committee.
It also raises the question, touched on by the Keane report, of establishing a code of conduct for judges.
While most attention has been focused recently on the type of conduct that led Tralee-based Circuit Court Judge Brian Curtin to be charged with possession of child pornography (though he was acquitted because of a defect in the warrant under which his computer was seized) other, less serious, matters also arise.
The conduct of judges in court, the level of courtesy with which they treat those appearing before them, ranging from those accused of crimes to members of the legal professions, the kind of remarks from the bench that are permissible and those that are not, should all be made clear to all court users.
This can be done in a code of conduct that stresses the sanctity of judicial discretion in making rulings and imposing sentence, without allowing it to be used as a cover for discourtesy and, in some few cases, the giving of gratuitous offence in court.