Praise for ‘pioneering’ Justice Birmingham in Cork court ahead of his retirement 

PRESIDENT of the Court of Criminal Appeal George Birmingham was praised in Cork on the last sitting of the court outside Dublin before his forthcoming retirement.

His role in investigating child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church was described as pioneering by Judge Helen Boyle of Cork Circuit Court.

Judge Boyle also said: “He worked very hard for people high up and low down.”

Tom Creed senior counsel, Donal T. McCarthy, barrister, and John Fuller, president of the Southern Law Association, all said that as practitioners in Cork they greatly appreciated that Mr Justice Birmingham had taken the Court of Criminal Appeal out of Dublin for occasional sessions in Cork and other parts of the country.

These speakers described how innovative it was of the president to bring the Court of Criminal Appeal out of Dublin in this manner.

Mr Creed said that following George Birmingham’s call to the bar in 1976 he developed one of the busiest mixed civil and criminal practices in the country before taking the brave decision to put himself before the people in a different kind of act of public service when he was elected as a TD for Dublin North Central.

In the following eight years he filled various roles as a public representative, not least at Minister of State for Foreign Affairs.

On behalf of his colleagues in the Court of Criminal Appeal, Mr Justice John Edwards said that the president had been enormously supportive of the other judges and would be greatly missed.

Mr Justice Birmingham said Cork and Munster had been a special place for him in his life not least because three of his grandparents came from Munster.

He said that in his role as president of the Court of Criminal Appeal the relationship developed through his colleague Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy with the law faculty in UCC had been particularly successful and gratifying.

At a personal level he said, “I am thinking of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn attending their own funeral.

“Listening to the speeches put me in mind of this – who is this person they all seem to have encountered?” He concluded by thanking the speakers and added: “I am embarrassed.”