The death has taken place of the well-known criminal law practitioner Patrick MacEntee SC (89), who acted in a number of high-profile court cases during his career including in the Special Criminal Court at the height of the political violence of the 1970s and 1980s.
Mr MacEntee was in 2005 appointed as the sole member of a commission of inquiry into the 1974 Dublin and Monaghan bombings, and produced his final report in 2007.
He acted for the defence in the controversial 1978 trial in the Special Criminal Court that led to the convictions of those accused of the Sallins train robbery, all of whom subsequently had their convictions overturned or were granted a pardon.
In 1983, he acted for Malcolm Macarthur, whose senseless killing of nurse Bridie Gargan and farmer Donal Dunne transfixed the nation.
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In 2000, he acted for Catherine Nevin who was convicted of the murder of her husband, Tom Nevin in the Co Wicklow pub, Jack White’s Inn, that they jointly owned. She was also convicted of soliciting others to kill her husband.
In addition to his career at the Bar, Mr McEntee was also heavily involved in cultural and academic matters.
He was a member of the board of the Fondation Irlandaise, the body established by the Irish and French governments to run the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris, formerly the Irish College, Paris. He was a member of the board of Ireland Literature Exchange (now Literature Ireland), chairman of the Irish-language drama company Amharclann De hÍde, and a Trustee of the Kavanagh Trust
Born in Monaghan in 1936, he attended UCD, where he was a prominent member of Dramsoc. Having completed his studies at King’s Inns, he practised on the Northern Circuit before shifting his practice to Dublin during the 1970s and 1980s, where he regularly appeared before the non-jury Special Criminal Court.
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