At the end of every year, one of the most time consuming duties of the junior hack is the compilation of the quotes of the year — a page filler in the news-starved time that fal ls between Christmas and the New Year, when people are too drunk or too busy to take time out to read newspapers. Every year that went by, you'd swear to yourself that the next year, you'd write down the quotes on a weekly basis to save yourself time at the end, but another year would go by, and you wouldn’t have taken your own advice.
However, in the newspapers in Galway on which I worked, the task was made all the easier by the presence of one man who was good for at least 10 per cent of the best quotes of the year. Judge John Garavan, who sadly passed away at the weekend, made that task al the easier because not a week went by without some form of witticism, common sense or honest to goodness dollop of fairness falling from his lips onto the harsh timbers of the courtrooms he served for more than two decades in Galway city and county.
He dealt with most of the county's characters - he was told one day that a defendant could see coffins floating above his head, but he was not fazed. He treated the bizarre like a long lost friend, and he looked after the deserving defendants.
He told me upon his retirement in 2003 that he loved his job. And it showed. And his love of his job, eased the nerves of all who came before him. Above all, he had a great respect for everyone and he agonised over whether he sentenced or not. From the press bench, you could hear him weighing up the social cost of imprisonment on the defendant’s family. If a prisoner was spared, he would remind him that it was all due to the excellence of his solicitor, a habit that endeared the judge to the dozens of young trainee solicitors who needed a confidence booster like that at the start of their carers. He was also protective of the press and always ensured that attempts to have them excluded from certain sections of cases were resisted, in the belief that justice should always be seen to be done.
Instead of the scraps on which we depended from other judges, he threw the juiciest of quotes our way, not fearing that he was overeducating us with prime prose from Wilde and Joyce.
People in his court left with their dignity intact. The kind of judge you would love to have adjudicating your case because you knew you would get a fair hearing without some of the cynicism and detachment that some judges take on as one of their privileges. And this love for Judge Garavan is evidenced in the true genuine sadness that was felt when news of his death came through.
You don’t see journalists or solicitors in tears that often (or not a s often as you should, I hear you say ) but that was not the case at his funeral in Castlebar this week when many of us remembered how kind he was to all of us, defendants included, at the starts of our careers. At the funeral, one man told one of his sons “He was a great man. He put me away, ya know, but twas the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Galway and the west has lost another legal giant — a person who may never be replaced. A man who was impeccably polite, cheeky and respectful — characteristics rarely seen together in many a human. To his family, friends, and all who knew him, including defendants, we send our condolences.
Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dílis
