Alan Shatter
Alan Joseph Shatter is an Irish lawyer, author and former Fine Gael politician who served as Minister for Justice and Equality and Minister for Defence from 2011 to 2014. He was a Teachta Dála for the Dublin South constituency from 1981 to 2002 and from 2007 to 2016. He left Fine Gael in early 2018 and ran as an independent candidate at the 2024 general election, but was not elected.
His most recent books are Life is a Funny Business, Frenzy and Betrayal: The Anatomy of a Political Assassination and Cyril's Lottery of Life
He has had occasional opinion articles published in The Irish Times, the Irish Independent, the Sunday Independent, the Business Post, the Jerusalem Post and the Times of Israel.
He is chairperson of the Inheritance Tax Reform Campaign and of Magen David Adom Ireland.
He is also a board member of the Israel Council on Foreign Relations and chair of MDA Ireland.
Personal life
Born in Dublin to a Jewish family, Shatter is the son of Elaine and Reuben Shatter, an English couple who met by chance when they were both on holiday in Ireland in 1947. He was educated at The High School, Dublin, Trinity College Dublin and the Europa Institute of the University of Amsterdam. In his late teens, he worked for two months in Israel on a kibbutz.Shatter has lived most of his life in Dublin; he grew up in Rathgar and Rathfarnham and lives now in Ballinteer with his wife, Carol Ann Shatter. He has two adult children. With interests in fifteen properties, Shatter had the largest property portfolio of any member of Ireland's cabinet while a cabinet minister.
Legal and writing career
Shatter was a partner in the Dublin law firm Gallagher Shatter. As a solicitor, he acted as an advocate in many seminal and leading cases in the High Court and Supreme Court. He is the author of one of the major academic works on Irish family law which advocated substantial constitutional and family law reform. As a politician, he played a lead role in effecting much of the constitutional and legislative change he advocated. He is a former chairperson of the Free Legal Advice Centres, a former chairperson of CARE, an organisation that campaigned for child care and children's legislation reform in the 1970s and a former President of the Irish Council Against Blood Sports. Among his professional affiliations, he is a Fellow of the International Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers.He is also the author of the satirical book Family Planning Irish Style, and the novel Laura. The former satirised the Health Act 1979 with cartoons by Chaim Factor, a well-known artist and sculptor. Amongst his targets was a provision which required a medical prescription to purchase condoms with the prescription designating the monthly number of condoms that could be lawfully purchased. Life is a Funny Business is a memoir of the years before his election to the Dáil and their relationship to later events. Frenzy and Betrayal: The Anatomy of a Political Assassination is his account of controversies that occurred in the period immediately preceding his resignation from the government in May 2014, and the reports on these events.
In 2023, his book Cyril's Lottery of Life, a comedic book with an English solicitor from a small town as its protagonist, was published.
Political career
Shatter entered politics at the 1979 local elections, winning a seat on Dublin County Council for the Rathfarnham local electoral area. He retained this seat until 1999. Shatter was first elected to the Dáil at the 1981 general election and was re-elected at each subsequent election until he lost his seat at the 2002 general election. He was re-elected at the 2007 general election.In 1983, Shatter defied his party's whip to vote against the inclusion in the Irish constitution of an anti-abortion provision.
While in opposition, he published more private member's bills than any other TD had done previously. The Judicial Separation and Family Law Reform Act 1989, radically reforming Irish family law, was the first enacted legislation which had begun as a private member's bill from an opposition TD for 35 years. The Adoption Act 1991 had also been introduced by Shatter as a private member's bill; this provided for the recognition for the first time of foreign adoptions in Ireland. The Environment Protection Agency Bill 1989 embraced the precautionary principle prioritizing environmental protection principles in government decision-making. The bill was defeated, but the government proposed its legislation soon after, with the Environmental Protection Agency established under the Environmental Protection Agency Act 1992
During the 1980s, Shatter successfully lobbied for the establishment of an Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs. He was a member of the Committee from its foundation in 1992, apart from a brief period in 1993 to 1994, and its chairman from December 1996 to June 1997. He was also for many years a member of the Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Law Reform and Defence.. Shatter was the founder of the Ireland–Israel Parliamentary Friendship Group and acted as its chairperson for many years. In 1985, Shatter visited the Soviet Union together with his Fine Gael colleague, Senator Seán O'Leary, and met with various Jewish refusenik families who had been prevented from emigrating to Israel and were in substantial difficulties with some family members imprisoned and others fired from academic and scientific jobs and forced to engage in menial employment. Upon returning to Dublin, Shatter and O'Leary published a report and held a press conference on their plight. The previous year on International Human Rights Day Shatter proposed a Dáil motion on the plight of Soviet Jewry which was passed and adopted by Dáil Éireann. Subsequently, similar motions were adopted in other European Parliaments. He is a former member of the Health and Children Committee and the Special Committee that considered the wording for a children's rights referendum. The wording he drafted substantially influenced the content of an amendment on children's rights incorporated into the Irish Constitution after a successful referendum in 2012
In 1998, he was the author of a report published by the Health Committee which criticised tobacco companies and recommended various controls on smoking and tobacco advertising. In the years that followed most of the recommendations made were implemented by the government.
In June 1993, he broke the party whip by voting in favour of a Bill to ban live hare coursing. Party leader John Bruton removed Shatter from the Foreign Affairs Committee as a disciplinary measure. He was restored to the Foreign Affairs committee in 1994.
He was Fine Gael Front Bench Spokesperson on Law Reform ; the Environment ; Labour ; Justice ; Equality and Law Reform ; Health and Children ; Justice, Law Reform and Defence ; Children ; and Justice and Law Reform.
During the 2009 Gaza War, Sinn Féin TD Aengus Ó Snodaigh said that Shatter and the Israeli Ambassador to Ireland had exposed the Oireachtas committee on Foreign Affairs to "propaganda, twisted logic and half-truths". Ó Snodaigh also said that Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, would have been proud of it. The Sinn Fein TD's attack on Shatter generated controversy, resulting in strong criticism of Ó Snodaigh from members of the ruling coalition and the Israeli embassy. In February 2009, during a sitting of the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs concerning the Gaza conflict, Shatter clashed verbally with Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, Professor of History at the University of Exeter, accusing Pappé of biased scholarship and historical inaccuracies. Shatter opposed the Control of Economic Activity Bill 2018 to ban the sale of products from Israeli settlements in Ireland.
On 9 March 2011, Shatter was appointed by the Taoiseach Enda Kenny as both Minister for Justice and Equality and Minister for Defence.
Minister for Justice (2011–2014)
Under Shatter's steerage, a substantial reform agenda was implemented with nearly 30 separate pieces of legislation published, many of which are now enacted including the Personal Insolvency Act 2012, Criminal Justice Act 2011, DNA Database Act, and the Human Rights and Equality Commission Act. Under his guidance, major reforms were introduced in 2011 into Ireland's citizenship laws and a new Citizenship Ceremony was created. Shatter both devised and piloted Ireland’s first-ever citizenship ceremony which took place in June 2011 and a new inclusive citizenship oath which he included in his reforming legislation. During his time as Minister, he cleared an enormous backlog of citizenship applications and 69,000 foreign nationals became Irish citizens. Some applications had lain dormant for 3 to 4 years. He introduced a general rule that save where there was some real complication, all properly made citizenship applications should be processed within six months. Shatter also took steps to facilitate an increased number of political refugees being accepted into Ireland and created a special scheme to facilitate relations of Syrian families already resident in Ireland who were either caught up in the civil war in Syria, or in refugee camps elsewhere as a result of the civil war in Syria, to join their families in Ireland.Shatter had enacted legislation before the end of July 2011 to facilitate access to financial documentation and records held by third parties in investigations into banking scandals and white-collar crime. The legislation was first used by the Gardaí in September 2011. As Justice Minister, he initiated the making of unprecedented arrangements with Brazil, a state with which Ireland had no extradition treaty, to effect rogue solicitor Michael Lynn’s extradition to Ireland for prosecution on numerous criminal charges relating to Lynn’s fraudulent financial conduct.
During Ireland's Presidency of the Council of the European Union in 2013, he chaired the Justice and Home Affairs Council meetings and, in January 2013, in Dublin Castle, the meeting of EU Defence Ministers. Under his guidance, Ireland played a more active role than in the past in EU defence matters and in deepening Ireland's participation in NATO's partnership for peace. Under his guidance, during the Irish Presidency, substantial progress was made at the European Union level in the adoption and development of new legislation and measures across a broad range of Justice and Home Affairs issues.
In June 2011, he apologised for "unfair and inaccurate" comments he made about RTÉ crime correspondent Paul Reynolds after saying he "consistently engages in tabloid sensationalism". When eight former attorneys general criticised the proposed Thirtieth Amendment of the Constitution on Oireachtas inquiries he described their views as "nonsense" and "simply wrong".
Shortly after taking office, the Cloyne report which had been commissioned by the previous government to investigate clerical sex abuse of children in the Diocese of Cloyne, was released. In response to this report and several other sex abuse scandals involving the Catholic Church, the Fine Gael–Labour Party government announced controversial plans to criminalise failure to report an allegation of child abuse. Seán Brady, the Catholic Archbishop of Armagh, condemned this as compromising the Seal of the Confessional. Shatter steered the legislation through the parliament and it was enacted in 2012.
Following the publication in 2012 of the report of Independent Senator Martin McAleese into the Magdalene Laundries, which Shatter commissioned, he established with government agreement a financial scheme to compensate the survivors of the laundries and other supportive measures. A state apology for the survivors' ill-treatment by various religious orders was, as a result of Shatter's engagement with this long-ignored issue, made in the Dail by the Taoiseach, Enda Kenny. The plight of the survivors of the laundries had been ignored for decades and there was widespread welcome for the government action taken.
Major reform of the Irish prison system occurred and greater co-operation between the prison and probation services was implemented. A prison modernisation programme was implemented and slopping out virtually ended. Mountjoy Prison was refurbished to provide proper in-cell sanitation and construction of a new Cork Prison was commenced. He also enacted legislation to require the courts to make greater use of community service orders for minor offences and to facilitate the payment of court-imposed fines by instalment.
In September 2011, Shatter published the Legal Services Reform Bill to modernise the legal profession, introduce greater competition and tackle the problem of excessive legal costs. The Bill generated enormous opposition from both the barristers and solicitors' professional bodies. It was welcomed by the Competition Authority and some other bodies, including the Troika to whom the Irish government was obliged to report as a result of the financial and banking collapse. Shatter engaged in an extensive consultative process on the Bill and it was substantially amended and improved as it went through the legislative process. Shatter refused to amend the provisions designed to reduce legal costs increase competition and enable barristers and solicitors to work together jointly as court advocates and in partnerships. The barristers' opposition to the bill remained strident whilst the solicitors became supportive of most of its provisions. The Bill still had to complete its enactment when Shatter resigned in May 2014. Following Shatter's resignation, his successor as Justice minister, Frances Fitzgerald amended some of the provisions.
On 3 March 2012, a convicted Garda killer escaped from a low-security open detention centre Loughan House in County Cavan and fled across the border into Northern Ireland. Shatter later apologised and said "it should not have occurred".
Shatter's proposal to cabinet in the autumn of 2013 that a referendum on marriage equality be held in the first half of 2015 was accepted and with cabinet agreement, he published in February 2014 the draft Children and Family Relationships Bill to substantially reform and modernise various aspects of child and family law. The legislation was enacted shortly before the referendum was held in 2015. The legislation enacted substantially reflected the draft bill Shatter published, save that the government omitted provisions relating to surrogacy, announcing in September 2014 that the issue would be addressed in separate legislation. Provisions on surrogacy were later enacted under the Health Act 2024.
He was the Minister responsible for two amendments to the Constitution of Ireland which were passed in referendums: the Twenty-ninth Amendment in 2011 to allow for the reduction of judges' pay, and the Thirty-third Amendment in 2013 to establish a Court of Appeal. Just before he resigned from government the draft legislation to create the court was published and the court was established and sitting by October 2014.
The jurisdictions of the courts were extended for the first time in 20 years and the maximum civil damages payable for the emotional distress of bereaved relations following a negligent death was increased.