The Master of the High Court has defended breaking windows in a courtroom in the Four Courts, saying there was a problem with the ventilation.

"The only way to get rid of a window is to break it," Edmund Honohan told RTÉ's Today with Sean O'Rourke.

Mr Honohan said he brought a hammer from his home to break the windows of his courtroom.

The Master of the High Court holds hearings on judicial matters and while not a judge is a quasi-judicial role.

He said he has been complaining about the ventilation in his courtroom for years, but said nothing had been done about it.

The story came to light over the weekend in an article in The Sunday Times Ireland Edition in which Mr Honohan said there was "a fug" in the stuffy courtroom that was making him ill.

A Courts Services spokesperson told The Sunday Times that the broken panes of glass had been replaced.

Today, Mr Honohan said he could produce hundreds of witnesses that would confirm that his room was unusable. He said he brought the hammer from home and broke the windows.

He said: "I left a message on it saying 'do not re-glaze', but that of course that was ignored".

Mr Honohan explained that when he leaves his courtroom at the end of the day it is sealed, leaving stale air until the next morning when the door is opened again.

He told the programme that, if necessary, he would do it again.

Mr Honohan had said that he would not sit in the courtroom again until the matter was resolved, which it has been as the windows that open onto the corridor have been unsealed.

It is "a vast improvement", he said, but there are six windows that open to the outside, but only one of them works.

"I've six opening windows, only one of them works," Mr Honohan said.

He said he has not looked at his post, but said there may be a letter from the Court Services warning him against damaging property in the Four Courts.

"My job is not to deal with correspondence," he said.