‘In the round, Martin may have done more than any of his contemporaries to address miscarriages of justice in Ireland’
Martin Giblin, Senior Counsel, doyen of cases challenging Irish miscarriages of justice is dead too young, at 73.
Abroad, I often feel like the character in Cinema Paradiso (1988), who is informed of the death of a mentor—and, in effect, the slow passing of what I regard as a more innocent, principled, and better Irish generation.
Martin Giblin SC, along with my good friend and instructing solicitor Paul McNally, Paul Callan SC who led a number of important cases on sovereignty and the independence of Ireland’s foreign policy, including Crotty and McKenna, and the leading EIA environmental case, Lancefort. The great Adrian Hardiman, who rose to the Supreme Court in the end, too was part of a diminishing “band of brothers” in the Law Library. Their work was frequently motivated by justice and civic duty.
In the round, Martin may have done more than any of his contemporaries to address miscarriages of justice in Ireland.
Martin grew up in a working-class area in a family of modest means. An academically gifted older brother was withdrawn from secondary school for economic reasons. The introduction of the third-level grant scheme, just as Martin was finishing school, enabled him to progress to university and the King’s Inns — an achievement that would have seemed unlikely earlier in his life. At university, he encountered an upper-middle-class world marked by snobbery and disdain for the working class.
In the 1970s, he championed the cause of women who defied the exclusionary traditions of ‘men only’ bars, taking on pubs that brazenly refused to serve female customers and challenging the renewal of their licences with quiet but determined fury.
In the late 1970s, he acted as a junior barrister for Osgur Breatnach after brutal framing by the Garda Heavy Gang in the infamous Sallins Train Robbery Case. Ministers of Justice have indulged this injustice ever since, with the latest refusal of a Citizens’ Petition from every human rights organisation in Ireland and Fair Trial International for a public inquiry into the case.
Giblin secured the overturning of Breatnach’s conviction but the State refused to compensate him. His co-accused Nicky Kelly was released on “humanitarian grounds” in 1984, and later received a Presidential pardon and compensation. Breatnach is still seeking a declaration of miscarriage of justice: after 40 years.
Infamously the Special Criminal Court, in addition to pretending to believe fabricated confessions and ignoring perjured evidence of Garda brutality, ignored the fact that one of their own was asleep on the bench during the trial. By comparison, the behaviour of today’s American courts seems almost sane. This case shaped Martin’s future. It made him beloved of the downtrodden and despised by the ruling elite.
Breatnach told Village:
“Martin received an objective life-lesson on injustice, the Irish Courts and the law when he ably advised me as a junior barrister in the Sallins Case, in what was to become the longest criminal trial in Irish history.
He never forgot the lessons therein. He continued to pick the side of the marginalised for the rest of his life. At a personal price”.
Decades later, Giblin stood at the forefront of one of Ireland’s most harrowing public inquiries—the Lindsay Tribunal—serving as a senior figure in the legal team representing the Irish Haemophilia Society. The tribunal, launched in 1999, probed the heartbreaking scandal in which haemophiliacs were infected with hepatitis C and HIV through tainted blood products distributed by the state’s own Blood Transfusion Service.
Though we were of different generations, outlooks, and backgrounds, Martin and I shared a complete distrust of the Garda. In his case, he saw little good in them — or in the state officials, barristers, and judges whose careers were tied to Garda patronage. He lamented judicial appointments rising through the prosecutor ranks — cognitively biased and agency-captured from the outset, not least those with extreme religious views. Discretion prevents me naming names, but you know who I mean.
He was a defence lawyer par excellence. That generation is fading now, replaced and marginalised in a country knee-deep in corruption, authoritarianism, state-sponsored surveillance and murder—and perhaps anarchy.
His historic representation of the McBreartys is legendary—a sustained campaign to expose framing by malice and incompetence. He acted for Frank McBrearty Junior following the false identification of him and his cousin Mark McConnell as the main suspects concerning the 1996 death of a cattle dealer, Richie Barron. It spawned the Morris Tribunal.
Frank McBrearty Junior told Village: “It would take three books to explain Martin Giblin SC and what he did for us when we were challenging the corrupt State and Garda and the useless Morris tribunal. He was my mentor, teacher, left and right hand—especially during my fight for justice at the useless [he actually said corrupt] Morris Tribunal. An ordinary man with an exceptional IQ, Martin helped us take on the might of the Irish Free State. He knew it was a cover-up and wasn’t afraid to act on it”.
Fiat Justitia Ruat Caelum — “Let justice be done though the heavens fall”. McBrearty says: “It is the Latin proverb Martin taught me that I live by. It’s tattooed on my forearm in Celtic script. Every time I look at it, I remember Martin and our battle against a corrupt State and police force who tried to frame us for a murder that never happened”.
He was a Rumpolean thorn in the establishment’s side—and proud of it. He wore his notoriety like a badge of honour or a war wound, and was happy, over breakfast, to offer detailed explanations of corruption too extreme for publication. Collegiality, at least on the surface, had to be maintained.
Martin was an expert in extradition law. His representation of Ian Bailey—also supported by my friend Jim Sheridan—stands in stark contrast to the idiotic and sub-literate sentiment expressed on that matter by Taoiseach Martin. His championing of Bailey, where in 2012 he successfully prevented extradition to France in the Supreme Court, showed his unwavering commitment to defending the vilified.
A Labour man through and through, Martin referred to Ireland’s deeply right-wing politicians in terms familiar to him—“gobshites,” or worse: “evil, malicious gobshites.” Perhaps now it is even worse. He had no faith in the ethics or competence of the Irish state or justice system, with a few rare exceptions of integrity—like himself.
When I was at a very low ebb, the victim of absurd and crude attempts at framing, Martin and his wife welcomed me into their home near the Botanic Gardens. We would walk there, out of earshot, where he rightly felt the surveillance state lurked everywhere.
He was a delightful eccentric, rooted in Dublin but with an integrity and individuality that might equally have been valued in Britain. He loved travel, conversation, and his wife’s company. A figure who transcended his background, he continued to practise even after being diagnosed with what was essentially throat cancer more than a decade ago. Though his voice had become croaky, he still fulfilled his duties. He loved the law, and he loved fighting for the underdog—as do I.
Beneath the honest Dub exterior was a deeply sophisticated, non-judgmental, and learned man—albeit privately so. He defined an old spirit in the Law Library now all but vanished: a barrister with no real interest in money for its own sake. He often waived his fee or charged very little. His interest was always in the justice of the case.
He was political too. In 2004, Giblin joined a chorus of legal dissent, uniting with fellow lawyers in a principled protest against the visit of US President George W. Bush. Their objection was clear: to denounce America’s bloody entanglement in the Iraq War and to reaffirm that silence, in the face of such actions, was not an option.
Reverting to Frank McBrearty Junior: “The battle to clear our names, from the District Court in 1997 to the Supreme Court in 2014, was like a middleweight fighter punching like a super heavyweight — or David versus Goliath. We were the underdogs, but we came out on top because we had Martin Giblin SC in our corner. No one has ever achieved what we did in the Irish courts”. He calls Giblin “simply brilliant”.
For me, I will always remember his kindness and advice — though I did not always follow or agree with it. In terms of theatrical advocacy or oratory, perhaps he would not rank at the highest level. But in his meandering, indirect, even tortuous style, he often reached the point with devastating effect, precisely because of his quiet delivery. And there are many blinding orators with no integrity.
Martin was the beloved husband of Maura, devoted father to Cian, Fergus, Cillian and Ruaidhrí and adored grandad to Ellie, Lucy, Oscar and Liam.
My thoughts are with him and his family.
