Analysis: Eileen Kennedy became the State's first female judge in 1964 and she remained the only female judge in an Irish court for over a decade
On International Women's Day, it is difficult to comprehend that the first female judge in the Republic of Ireland was appointed just 60 years ago. In April 1964, former army nurse and coroner for Co. Monaghan, Eileen Kennedy, was appointed as District Justice in the Children's Court in the Dublin Metropolitan area, where she would remain until her death in 1983.
Justice Kennedy, a qualified solicitor, was somewhat of an outlier as Ireland’s first female judge. Until then, and is largely the case today, judges were chosen from the ranks of barristers, usually those who had at least 10 years’ experience in order to become a Senior Counsel (SC).
#Mná100 Eileen Kennedy, 1st woman District Justice in Ireland, was given particular responsibility for the children's court. Her report (1970) was highly critical of the industrial schools system & called for the introduction of a Children's Act. https://t.co/uU2sLW4edy #DIBlives pic.twitter.com/Aztd8TyCbU
— Dictionary of Irish Biography (@DIB_RIA) June 25, 2021
Indeed, Kennedy did not at all fit the profile of a typical Irish judge. This is evident from a study conducted by American academic Paul C. Bartholomew. He visited Dublin in 1969 and conducted an anonymous survey for which he interviewed both serving and retired judges. He noted that the typical judge appointed between 1937 and 1969 was male, catholic, came from Dublin, went to UCD, and had one or more lawyers in the family.
However, Kennedy shared none of these characteristics and was the only female judge out of 57 judges serving in the courts throughout the 1960s. Not much has been written on Kennedy, and she may have been eclipsed by other female trailblazers if it had not been for a damning and pioneering Commission report on Ireland's Industrial and Reformatory schools, to which she was appointed as Commission Chair by then Minister, Donogh O' Malley.
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From RTÉ Archives, 1967 RTÉ News report on the appointment of District Justice Eileen Kennedy to chair a committee on the reformatory industrial schools
Published in 1970, the Kennedy Report was described by the Irish Times 'as almost Dickensian in its intensity…, one point which emerged clearly from the committee notes is that there is, in general, a lack of awareness of the needs of the child in care’. The Kennedy Report was described by campaigner and journalist Mary Raftery, as ‘one of the most damning indictments of the operation of any State system ever recorded in this country’. The subsequent Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (Amendment) Bill 2005, which resulted in the Ryan Report of 2009, acknowledged that the Kennedy Report marked the point in the 20th century at which the slow painful transformation of Irish childcare began.
In April 1970, Kennedy was appointed by the then Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, to the Commission on the Status of Women. During her tenure on the Board, their Report, under its chair, Dr Theka Beere, resulted in significant improvements in the legal status of Irish women. As a valued member of the Commission, Kennedy was instrumental in highlighting the discriminatory effects of the Marriage Bar, instituted in the 1920s. This ensured that women, once married, had to give up their jobs if they worked in the civil service. The marriage bar was removed in July 1973, on foot of the report of the first Commission on the Status of Women.
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From RTÉ Archives, Olivia O'Leary reports for RTÉ News in 1973 on reaction to the publication of the final report by the first Commission on the Status of Women in Ireland.
But the ascension of women to the judiciary in Ireland was painfully slow, especially the appointment of female judges to the High Court and the Supreme Court. It must have been quite an isolated environment for Kennedy, as the only female judge in an Irish court for over a decade. Moreover, she was quite the oddity, with people swarming the courtroom to see her for two reasons: she was a woman; and she was the first judge not to wear a wig in the Children’s Court, helping to somewhat diminish the daunting experience of the courtroom.
While the 1970s was a decade of women’s activism in Ireland, the gains for women did not include female judges in the senior courts. That would not come until 1980, with the appointment of Mella Carroll to the High Court. It is worth noting that 2024 also marks 100 years of the modern Court Services in Ireland, as well as 60 years since Kennedy became the first female judge.
Since Kennedy's appointment, there has been a steady increase in the number of women in the judiciary in Ireland. In November 2023, Irish legal history was made when Ms Justice Tara Burns, Ms Justice Isobel Kennedy and Ms Justice Úna Ní Raifeartaigh sat as the first-all-woman panel on the Court of Appeal, which was established in 2014. Prior to 2023, Judges Mary Finlay Geoghegan, Mary Irvine and Caroline Costello sat as a civil panel in 2017. They were referred to as the 'All Sacred Heart Court'.
Since Kennedy's appointment, there has been a steady increase in the number of women in the judiciary in Ireland
In 2020, the Supreme Court sat as a five-judge panel, with four female judges. This is all very positive progress for the diversity of the Irish judiciary. In fact, the number of women in the judiciary has grown to the point where 40% of Supreme Court judges are women.
In the past, one of these women was Susan Denham, who herself made legal history on two occasions, by becoming the first female judge to be appointed to the Supreme Court and Ireland’s first female Chief Justice. Speaking on her appointment to the Supreme Court in 1992, Justice Denham said: ‘I felt that I was on the shoulders of the pioneering women of previous generations.’
These pioneering women include Eileen Kennedy, a small-town solicitor from Carrickmacross in Co. Monaghan. According to Nuala Fennell, former Minister of State for Women’s Affairs, she was someone "known for her compassionate approach to cases which she dealt with, during her years in the Children’s Court" and Chair of the groundbreaking Kennedy Report.
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
