New Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan to give up practising law during time in Cabinet

Incoming Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan is to give up practising law during his time in Cabinet, the Department of Justice has confirmed.

Mr O’Callaghan, who has worked as a barrister since 1993 and has been a senior counsel since 2008, was appointed by Micheál Martin to head up the department, which will also cover Domestic Affairs and Migration, on Thursday.

In 2020, he turned down an offer of a Minister of State position in the Department of Justice, saying at the time that he believed his energy and abilities would be better used as a backbench TD rather than as a “junior member of Government”.

On Friday, a spokesman for the department said the Dublin Bay South TD was “in the process of removing himself from the roll of practising barristers, and will not be practising during his time in office”.

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Among the tasks awaiting Mr O’Callaghan will be to take up work done on reforming defamation laws, progressed by the last Government but which were not passed before it left office.

The new programme for Government commits the incoming Coalition to “restore the Defamation Bill to the order paper and make passing the legislation a priority”.

While a Government backbencher, Mr O’Callaghan described a key part of the bill – namely, the removal of juries from High Court defamation actions – as “short-sighted” and “not fully thought out”.

Asked if Mr O’Callaghan intended to seek to amend the current bill as it related to juries or whether he would proceed with it in its current form, the department pointed to the Government commitment to restore the “existing Defamation Bill to the order paper” and said Mr O’Callaghan “intends to deliver upon this commitment”.

The bill aims to tackle disproportionate awards in defamation cases, with juries seen by critics as driving higher awards given to successful plaintiffs who initiate proceedings against publishers.

It also seeks to deter the abusive use of unfounded defamation proceedings, including so-called “Strategic Lawsuits against Public Participation”, or SLAPPs.

Mr O’Callaghan’s legal work has on occasion attracted political comment – including from Coalition partners Fine Gael. In the last days before the General Election in 2020, then Fine Gael Cabinet minister Regina Doherty suggested his work on behalf of former Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams could represent a conflict of interest.

At the time, the then-Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said that Mr O’Callaghan could have recused himself from representing the former Sinn Féin leader.

Mr O’Callaghan acted for Mr Adams in a court action against a national newspaper in a defamation case before he was elected to the Dáil.

His representation of Mr Adams was defended indirectly at the time by the bar council, which released a statement which did not directly reference the controversy but outlined that barristers cannot discriminate in favour or against any person seeking to avail of their services on a range of grounds, including their politics.

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