Former chief justice remembered as ‘one of life’s true gentlemen’

Former chief justice Thomas Finlay was remembered as “one of life’s true gentlemen” at his funeral Mass on Tuesday morning.

Mr Finlay’s son Tom said his father was “a man for others in his many roles”.

“He was one of life’s true gentlemen, gentle in all his interactions with others, always courteous and endlessly patient and grateful,” Mr Finlay said.

Hundreds of mourners gathered at the Church of the Sacred Heart in Donnybrook for funeral Mass, including President Michael D Higgins, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan and Minister for Children and Youth Affairs Katherine Zappone.

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Chief Justice Frank Clarke was also present along with a number of judges and retired judges including Peter Charleton, Susan Denham and chair of the Citizens’ Assembly Mary Laffoy.

Mr Finlay died aged 95 at his home in Dublin last Sunday .

Mr Finlay was elected to the Dáil for Fine Gael in the constituency of Dublin South Central in 1954 but lost his seat in 1957. He was appointed a High Court judge in 1971 and president of the High Court in 1974. He became Chief Justice in 1985, in which office he served until 1994.

“As a father he was steadfastly supportive to each of us. We all learned valuable lessons from Dad, mostly from his example, and he was happily fully aware of how unwelcome unsolicited free advice could be,” Mr Finlay said.

‘Action man’

He said his father lived “a long and fruitful life” and “was quite an action man in his younger days”, spending much of his time in Co Mayo.

“Dad took endless delight in his grandchildren and more recently his great-grandchildren. He followed all their various activities with great interest,” Mr Finlay added.

Fr Conor Harper said the former chief justice was “a deeply spiritual man” and attended Mass at the Donnybrook church every morning up until two weeks ago. “He was one of these people who was authentic, he was a very good and faithful Christian in the best possible sense,” Fr Harper said. “Tom lived his life to the full, there were so many facets that he was a man for all seasons as well as being – as Tom said – ‘a man for others’.”

Above all, Fr Harper said, Mr Finlay was “the treasure at the heart” of his family. “For his leisure, especially with all the pressures of public life, his great leisure was to escape to God’s own country as he called it, down to Mayo surrounded by nature and fishing, his lifelong passion,” he added.

“He was a man of faith, a man of charity, a man of service, a man of honour. He did what God asks of each one of us, to act justly, to love tenderly and to walk humbly with God. We give thanks to God for a truly good man this morning.”

Funeral mass was followed by burial at Shanganagh Cemetery.

Amongst Mr Finlay’s most significant decisions were Attorney General v Hamilton (1992), in which the Supreme Court held that the confidentiality of cabinet discussions was absolute; and Attorney General v Hamilton (no 2) (1993), in relation to parliamentary privilege, where the Supreme Court held that TDs are not amenable to any legal process in relation to utterances made by them in the Dáil.

Mr Finlay also gave the leading judgment in the controversial X case (Attorney General v X) (1992), in which a 14-year-old girl, pregnant as a result of rape by a family friend, was allowed to travel to England for an abortion notwithstanding the Constitutional guarantee that the State would protect the right to life of the unborn.