The two former judges involved in the Philip Sheedy case may be asked to appear voluntarily before an Oireachtas committee to account for their actions.
The Joint Committee on Justice, Equality and Women's Rights will take soundings today on the necessity, and nature of its powers, to conduct a further examination into the conclusions of the two reports into the affair.
But it has already been advised that judges, and former judges, cannot be compelled to give evidence before a committee about cases which they have heard.
Pleading full support for any inquiry by the committee, the Minister for Justice yesterday ruled out a tribunal of inquiry into the contested facts in the Sheedy case.
The handling of the case produced two further casualties yesterday. Mr Justice Cyril Kelly of the High Court followed in the footsteps of his senior colleague, Mr Justice Hugh O'Flaherty of the Supreme Court, by resigning in the morning.
And in a major development, the County Registrar, Mr Michael Quinlan, who was the most senior Circuit Court official in Dublin, also tendered his resignation.
A Department of Justice investigation into the early release of Sheedy, published yesterday, found that while Mr Quinlan's motives and actions were very evidently misguided, they were not "corrupt".
But his performance, particularly in relation to the Department's inquiry, "fell well short of the standards that can reasonably be expected of a person holding the position of county registrar. In the circumstances, it obstructed and misled the Department's investigation and, in our view, amounted to misbehaviour on his part," the report said.
The Department's report indicated that it was necessary, in looking at Mr Quinlan's actions generally, to recognise that "he appears to have taken it that it was his duty to meet what he took to be the wishes of one of the most senior members of the judiciary - Mr Justice Hugh O'Flaherty - by arranging to have the Sheedy case brought back quickly before the court".
