Born: January 20th, 1938Died: August 5th, 2026Hugh O’Flaherty who has died aged 88, was a brilliant barrister in his younger years whose standing in the profession saw him elevated directly to the Supreme Court.There, he was known for his compassionate approach as a judge, perhaps never more so than in the so-called X-case of 1992. In that case he sided with the majority in a four-to-one decision when the court ruled that a 14-year-old rape victim, pregnant and suicidal, could obtain an abortion in the State.At the time, the procedure was illegal, under statute law and via a constitutional amendment. Because of this, the then attorney general had sought and obtained an injunction preventing the child, known as X, leaving the State – in effect, forcing her to endure the pregnancy and birth.The injunction provoked widespread consternation. The Supreme Court ruling was the first of several legal and medical decisions that led eventually to the removal of the constitutional prohibition on abortion and, following a Citizens’ Assembly on the subject, to abortion legislation broadly in line with many other jurisdictions.In his early years at the bar, O’Flaherty lectured in law at University College Dublin (UCD) and also moonlighted as a subeditor for The Irish Press – a discipline that encouraged the clarity and brevity that was reflected in his written judgments.Hugh O’Flaherty was born in January 1938 in Killarney, Co Kerry. He was the first of two children of Kathleen (née Mac Sweeney) and James O’Flaherty, an electrician by trade.Sadly for him and his sister Pearl, Kathleen died when they were very young. An aunt, Bride Sheehan (née O’Flaherty) and her husband Christy raised Hugh; the couple ran a hardware shop in Cahersiveen and had no children of their own. Pearl was placed with her grandmother.Despite this tragic start to his life, the young Hugh had a happy childhood and never lost his deep love of Kerry – its people, their history, landscape and football.Part of his personal family heritage almost certainly had an impact in fashioning his moral compass as a young man. His uncle (Bride Sheehan’s brother) was Msgr Hugh O’Flaherty, a priest who, while serving in the Vatican during the second World War, helped save the lives of some 6,500 Allied soldiers and Jews, hiding them in church properties and private homes in and around Rome.[ Irish priest who rescued thousands from Nazis commemorated in RomeOpens in new window ]When the Hugh O’Flaherty Memorial Society was formed in 2008, Hugh and Pearl served as inaugural patrons. In the years that followed, both assisted in fundraising for the society, as well as securing archive memorabilia for it and helping authors and film-makers researching their uncle’s life and work.Hugh O’Flaherty’s childhood in Kerry included attending St Brendan’s College in Killarney as a boarding pupil. He did well there and went on to study law at UCD (encouraged strongly by his Aunt Bride) and King’s Inn.At UCD, he threw himself into student life, especially the Literary and Historical Society (the L&H), where he honed the analytical and debating skills that would later serve him well when presenting in court.He was L&H records secretary in 1958-59 and was also auditor of the UCD Law Society for the 1957-58 session.In 1959, he was called to the bar at the young age of 21 and was made a senior counsel in 1976. He appeared for numerous and diverse clients, and often on behalf of the State.He took particular pride in his role as a member of the Stardust Victims Compensation Tribunal, which concluded that the families of victims had been neglected by the State after the 1981 tragedy which claimed 48 lives. O’Flaherty was determined that the families were facilitated in telling their stories about how the fire had affected them.In 1991, he was appointed to the Supreme Court, one of very few barristers elevated directly to the highest level of the judiciary. However, his career came to a premature halt with what became known as the Sheedy Affair.This concerned a young architect, Philip Sheedy, who in 1996 crashed his car, drunk and just one day after getting it, at a roundabout in Tallaght, Co Dublin, killing a 36-year-old mother of two, Anne Ryan, as she was driving home with her children.A year later, Sheedy pleaded guilty to dangerous driving causing death and was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment by Judge Joseph Matthews. However, just over a year after that, the case was relisted for hearing, this time before Judge Cyril Kelly, who ordered that the balance of the sentence be suspended and Sheedy released.Amid public furore, it emerged that the listing of the case before Kelly was the result of a conversation between O’Flaherty, and the then Dublin county registrar, Michael Quinlan.After examining what had gone on, the chief justice, Liam Hamilton, concluded in a report that both Kelly and O’Flaherty had compromised the administration of justice. Both resigned.[ Former Supreme Court judge Hugh O’Flaherty a ‘brilliant legal brain’, funeral Mass hearsOpens in new window ]For O’Flaherty, who felt he had done nothing wrong, it was a harsh and tragic end to a glittering legal career. But he did not resile from living a full life thereafter and neither did he dwell overly on what had happened.Family mattered most. When still a young barrister, he had been a patient in the Mater hospital. There he watched a compassionate nurse, Kathleen Brennan from Coonacool in Sligo, tend a dying patient in the next bed. After he was discharged, he asked her out and in September 1961, they married. They had four children and lived variously in south county Dublin, and in Herbert Park and Sandymount.They were a dynamic couple – engaging, conversational and generous hosts. O’Flaherty was forever interested in politics, domestic and international, and was also a voracious reader. He devoured anything relating to the second World War (and history in general), was expert on Joyce’s Ulysses and learned Shakespeare’s Hamlet off by heart.“He could read two books a week and dispatched Angela Merkel’s autobiography in a couple of days,” a journalist friend said. He was a keen golfer (Portmarnock) and an avid follower of Kerry football. He and Kathleen did house swaps with people in Australia, and travelled also to the United States.Former law colleagues were generous in their praise after his death, several leaving condolences on RIP.ie.Attorney General Rossa Fanning wrote: “He had an enormously impactful career as both a barrister and a judge and will be fondly remembered by the generations of lawyers who knew and admired him.”Former president of the Court of Appeal George Birmingham recalled having a seat beside his in the Law Library – “there was never a boring day thereafter nor did an issue ever arise where I couldn’t turn to Hugh for wise advice”, he wrote.“As an advocate, he had the rare ability to reduce the complex to the intelligible (a skill he had learned as a journalist) with warmth and charm,” wrote Felix McEnroy SC. “He revered modern outstanding judges like Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh, Brian Walsh and Séamus Henchy. He was wary of procedural legal technicalities which he felt could become the ‘master’ rather than the ‘servant’ of justice ... As a judge his core belief was that the losing party in any case should leave court feeling that their point of view had been heard and carefully considered. He had no interest in the temptation to condemn.”In a eulogy at his funeral, his barrister son, also named Hugh, said his father had brought compassion to the bench. “While he had a brilliant legal brain and could wrestle with the most complex legal issues, he always approached law through the prism of compassion and justice,” he said. “Where someone saw a convicted criminal, he saw beyond that and saw that there was more to that person than their conviction and that they too had a family who loved that person. During his time on the bench, he gave some great judgments that have lasted the test of time.”Hugh O’Flaherty was predeceased by his wife Kathleen. He is survived by their children Hugh, Catherine, Rory and Bríd; by his son-in-law Ryan, daughters-in-law Valerie and Elizabeth, grandchildren Alice-Kate, Molly, Hugh, Abigail, Rory and Oscar; by his sister Pearl Dineen, sister-in-law Christina Murphy, (Tubbercurry), and by Breege Brennan.