Carney, who last week allowed a convicted rapist to walk free from court alongside his victim, railed against the suggestion that soft sentences are the way of the future.

"My great fear is that a sentence is going to be structured so as to allow a killer to kill again, or a rapist to rape again, " he said.

"There are people who need to be taken out of society for our protection. I am not to be taken as saying that there are not cases where restorative justice and community service may not be appropriate.

These cases simply do not reach me, my starting point being the sentences appropriate to murder, manslaughter, and rape."

It's a rather ironic statement, considering Monday's decision. A softer sentence than three suspended years for a rapist would be hard to find. Yet barristers who spoke to the Sunday Tribune said the ruling probably didn't reflect the sentence that Carney really wanted to impose.

"No judge likes being overruled, " one senior counsel said.

"In the case of NY [see panel opposite], the appeal court overruled his decision on the basis that Carney had made an error in principle. For months and years afterwards, Carney would mention that ruling during other cases.

"I think he takes the view that the judges in the Court of Criminal Appeal are not the people at the coalface and do not, in fact, deal with many criminal trials. The way he sees it, he's the one sitting up front and when his decisions are overturned it's mud in the eye for him."

The barrister emphasised that he believed Carney made his decision, not "out of any petty personal reasons" but rather out of a strong desire to have his decision stand.

It's not the first time that Carney has explicitly mentioned the possible decision of the CCA in his reasoning for delivering a sentence.

When presiding over the Wayne O'Donoghue trial, in which a fouryear jail sentence caused uproar all over the country - Carney raised some eyebrows when he said that "in recent times the Court of Criminal Appeal had decimated" many of the manslaughter sentences imposed by him and his colleagues.

And when recently sentencing a Dublin man to nine years for the rape of a prostitute, Carney remarked that the facts of the case struck him as being strikingly similar to the Robert Melia case, in which his own imposed sentence of nine years was increased to 12 by the CCA. "The DPP had a lot to say in the CCA behind my back but very little in this court to my face, " he said.

In the case of a Carlow man who raped his nieces and nephews, Carney gave an eight-year sentence, with 18 months suspended, but could not help remarking, "This is a case in which I could be appealed by the Court of Criminal Appeal."

In some cases, the CCA has even quashed some of Carney's rulings, including some of the most highprofile cases in the country. Last year, the appeal court quashed the conviction of Padraig Nally for the manslaughter of a Traveller on his Mayo farm. And in 1999, the 10-year sentence imposed by Carney on former nun Nora Wall was later overturned on appeal.