Seamus Woulfe finally meets with Chief Justice Frank Clarke about ‘Golfgate’

SUPREME COURT JUDGE Seamus Woulfe finally met with Chief Justice Frank Clarke to discuss Woulfe’s attendance at the ‘Golfgate’ event and subsequent comments that have been labeled as controversial.

A spokesman for the courts said the meeting took place this afternoon in the Four Courts.

However, an official statement on the meeting will not be issued until next week.

The judges were to discuss the ongoing consequences of Woulfe’s attendance at the controversial ‘Golfgate’ dinner in Clifden in August, where 81 people gathered in what was seen as a violation of public health guidelines at the time.

The two judges were supposed to meet on four separate occasions in October, but the scheduled meeting was postponed and eventually canceled. Woulfe requested a postponement for “personal reasons” at first, and then for “medical reasons.”

This meeting is part of the “informal resolution” that was recommended in a report to address Woulfe’s attendance at the Golfgate dinner, which resulted in the resignation of Dara Calleary as Agriculture Minister and Phil Hogan as EU Trade Commissioner. .

On Sunday, The Times reported that some Supreme Court justices told Woulfe that not all of his colleagues are happy or comfortable sitting next to him on the cases following the release of former Supreme Court Chief Justice Susan Denham’s report on your attendance at the golf dinner.

Denham Report

Denham’s review of Woulfe’s dinner attendance found that it would be “unfair and disproportionate” for the judge to resign.

However, further controversy ensued after transcripts of an interview with Woulfe with Denham were released in the course of the review, and media coverage of the scandal was described as “appalling”, “exaggerated” and “false” , with claims that the social event was treated as the “Ku Klux Klan.”

Although Woulfe issued a statement in which he apologized “without reservation” for attending an event where “violations may have occurred”, during this interview with Denham he said that while he apologized, he was not sure why. he had to apologize.

He said: “If it is still the case that there was an intentional violation on my part, I obviously apologize, I still apologize and I apologize again. But it is fair to say that it seems now, objectively, that there was no non-compliance by the organizers, much less by me ”.

Woulfe also said he felt sorry for “some of the unfortunate politicians” who “feel the need to confess to a crime that they may not have committed.”

In his report, Denham suggested that the fallout from the Golfgate controversy could be addressed through an informal resolution.

In July, Woulfe was appointed a Justice of the Supreme Court, Ireland’s highest court, after Paul Gallagher replaced him in his role as Attorney General as part of the formation of a new government.

With reports from Laura Byrne