The Sheedy affair raised fundamental questions about the conduct of judges both inside and outside their courts. Public confidence in the judiciary was shaken, and it became clear no mechanisms existed where complaints against judges could be investigated in a transparent fashion.
Faced with this question, the response of the judiciary in both this and other similar jurisdictions has been to point to the principle of judicial independence. This has been at the centre of debate about judicial accountability.
It may appear like an excuse to an outsider, but there are very good reasons why the judiciary should be independent, especially from government. Recent cases where Government Ministers were asked by the High Court to justify inaction in relation to troubled children provide just one example. While conceding that some system is necessary, the judiciary has insisted that this should be controlled by the judiciary itself.
The question raised is: how is the public to have confidence in a system closed to public scrutiny? In considering this issue, the Committee on Judicial Conduct and Ethics organised a conference which was addressed by, among others, the Chief Justice of New South Wales, Sir Anthony Mason.
He warned against over-reliance on the judicial independence argument to avoid accountability. "There is a lot to be said for the view that judges have devalued judicial independence in the public estimation by relying upon it in order to protect their own position and power," he said.
He also warned that the public would like to see a system in which complaints were determined by an independent or neutral body, and that, if judicial independence were invoked, the public would be likely to respond that judicial independence should be subordinate to judicial accountability.
Mr Justice Keane's committee has responded by proposing a two-tier system. The Irish judiciary will be self-regulating, forming a council of which all judges will be members, with a number of committees. These will include a judicial conduct and ethics committee made up of nine judges.
This committee will filter complaints, weeding out the trivial, the vexatious, and those which could be dealt with by the courts by way of appeal. The remainder will go to a panel of inquiry.
This is where a measure of external scrutiny comes in. The panel of inquiry will consist of two judges and a lay person. The lay person will be one of three appointed, not by an elected politician like a Government minister, but by the Attorney General, who will have been a senior barrister.
Thus the hermetic seal around the judiciary and the pool from which it is drawn will not have been seriously broken. It is clear from the report that the hearings of this panel will be in private, as are disciplinary hearings of other professional bodies.
These proposals differ from the system established in other jurisdictions in that there are no representatives of other branches of the legal profession involved.
It remains to be seen if they will meet the demand for judicial accountability revealed by the Sheedy affair.