The presidential election is less than two weeks away and the position of Independent candidate Catherine Connolly as front-runner has been bolstered.
It has been strengthened by Fianna Fáil candidate Jim Gavin ending his campaign, by the weekend’s poll numbers, and by anecdotal evidence from the campaign trail, where Connolly seems to be generating momentum.
But being the front-runner brings its own pressures, among them the increased scrutiny that a likely president can expect. Connolly has had a mixed week trying to deal with it.
Immediately after telling journalists on Wednesday: “Now more than ever we need people to question, and to question repeatedly, and to make questions ... to look on a question as difficult is not my way. Questions should be posed and answered”, Connolly repeatedly declined to say whether she had worked for banks in home repossession cases when she was a barrister.
RM Block
Given her public stance on the housing crisis, where she has for years advocated for tenants’ rights, it’s easy to see how it might be embarrassing if banks employed her to get people evicted from their homes.
But she would only say, again and again, that she “took all kinds of work”. Pressed on whether that included repossessions, she would not say.
Connolly insisted that barristers are obliged under the “cab-rank” rule to represent clients when asked to do so, something that is one of the principles of an independent Bar, and is important to ensuring that everyone can have access to legal representation (assuming they can pay, of course, or in cases where the State pays).
The Bar Council issued a statement, noting that it is “the duty of barristers to accept instructions in any case in their area of practice. As a result, barristers should not be identified with their clients or their clients’ causes or suffer adverse consequences as a result of being so identified”.
Several barristers who spoke privately confirmed that this was an important principle, and something for which Connolly should not be criticised.
However, some of them also stated that in practice, a barrister could avoid taking a particular case by claiming to be too busy, lacking expertise in a specific area, or by naming a fee that the client would not pay.
Asked if there were circumstances in which a barrister could refuse a case, the Bar Council’s spokeswoman said the council would not elaborate on its statement, noting the council’s code of conduct for barristers.
This contains many rules about how barristers should take cases, but also several about when a lawyer might not take a case: “A barrister may be justified in refusing to accept instructions where a conflict of interest arises ... or where there are other special circumstances.”
Connolly has long been an advocate for those affected by the housing crash. Since her election in 2016, she has repeatedly spoken in the Dáil about evictions, including calling for a moratorium on house repossessions. On one occasion, she described an eviction as “cruel, inhuman and unacceptable”.
Asked yesterday if Connolly has ever declared her work as a barrister on behalf of banks while making these criticisms in the Dáil, her campaign did not respond.
She also ran into trouble this week on her trip to Syria in 2018.
When asked about it before, she had previously said: “I funded that trip”. But The Irish Times revealed this week that the Oireachtas had actually covered the costs of the trip through her travel allowances.
Connolly confirmed this after The Irish Times published the story, having previously declined to respond to questions.
Asked if she misled people when she said she funded the trip herself, Ms Connolly replied: “That’s exactly what I did, out of my parliamentary PAA allowance.”
Put to her that the impression given was that she had used personal funds, she insisted that she “never gave that impression”.
Connolly also stumbled when – following on from a controversy about employing a person with a conviction for arms offences in the Special Criminal Court in Leinster House after they secured early release from prison – she was asked if she would employ someone convicted of rape in Áras an Uachtaráin. Connolly had insisted that she believed in rehabilitation in the case of Leinster House.
“I would have to think about it,” she replied.
After 24 hours and a mini-media storm, she decided that she would not employ someone, as they would be on the sex offenders’ register.
Connolly’s allies protested about a Fine Gael smear. But they were Connolly’s own words. And the unease among some of her supporters was clear.
For someone seen in Leinster House as reserved, she has bloomed on the campaign trail. Her supporters are upbeat – but also nervous about where the next controversy is coming from.
