THE COURTS SERVICE has denied claims that a High Court judge said the use of the party whip system to nominate presidential candidates is a breach of the Constitution.

The claims, which have been shared widely on social media in recent days, were reported to have been made by Justice Mark Heslin this week in proceedings brought by Cora Stack, an academic who failed to win a nomination for the upcoming election.

Stack has sought to challenge various State bodies and Fine Gael leader Simon Harris over the nomination process for the election, claiming that she and other independent candidates were unlawfully blocked from entering the race.

The case was heard on Tuesday, when Heslin is reported to have made closing remarks that were critical of the use of the whip system imposed by Harris to stop councillors nominating independent candidates.

Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin also requested that his councillors back the party’s candidate Jim Gavin, though no formal whip system was imposed by him.

In quotes that have been shared online, the judge allegedly said that although “the party whip can be used in many situations, it cannot be used in a presidential election selection process” because this would be in breach of the Constitution.

The alleged quote was posted on Facebook on Tuesday by Walter Ryan Purcell – a businessman from Cork who had also sought nomination and who claims to have been in court on Tuesday.

However, a spokesperson for the Courts Service has denied that the judge said this.

“The quote on social media attributed to Judge Heslin is entirely wrong. Those words were never spoken by the judge in this case,” they said in a statement to The Journal.

Purcell told The Journal that the judge had asked questions about the matter to both Stack and “the opposing barrister”. It would be a normal part of proceedings that judges probe the issues of a case in this way but without making definitive declarations ahead of their rulings. 

Numerous posts containing the quote or repeating the claim that the judge criticised the party whip system have been shared widely since Tuesday.

Analytics data from Meta shows that posts containing the claim have been seen tens of thousands of times on Facebook, while another post on X sharing the quote has also been seen more than 100,000 times to date.

A judgment in Stack’s case is due next Thursday, a day before the presidential election.