Jim O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay South, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 9:

In page 8, to delete line 32.

The Chairman referred to this as an extraordinary grouping. An extraordinary grouping requires an extraordinary response. I do not propose to go through each one of these amendments by way of an individual debate because they are all in my name and that of Deputy Chambers and they all concern the same net issue. Rather than saying "amendment No. 9 deals with this" and going through each one individually, I will deal with them broadly and it will cover all of them.

If members have the Bill in front of them and look at page 11, sections 11 and 12, they will see the purpose of all of these amendments. In effect, amendment No. 9, all the other amendments being consequential on it, seeks to remove from the piece of legislation this definition of relevant committees of the commission. We know a commission will be established but what happened after the heads of Bill were published is that the Government made a decision that it was going to include within the commission all these groups of relevant committees. Those relevant committees are set out on page 11 in section 11 of the Bill. Members can see that there are five relevant committees of the commission. They are the Supreme Court appointments committee, the Court of Appeal appointments committee, the High Court appointments committee, the Circuit Court appointments committee and the District Court appointments committee. All the other amendments that come after amendment No. 9 are consequential. They remove references to the relevant committee.

What I propose should happen is that instead of having five different committees within the commission, we should just have one body, which would be the Judicial Appointments Commission. The reason this committee structure was introduced after the heads of Bill were published by the Government was because the Government recognised that membership of the commission was inadequate. If members look at section 12 on page, they will see that the commission is to be made up of 13 members. One of my criticisms and that of others is that it was wrong that the president of the Circuit Court and the president of the District Court were excluded from the commission since they are the presidents of the courts that have the largest number of judges and have the greatest amount of interaction with members of the public and because they are people who know what is required in a District or Circuit Court judge. That was a legitimate criticism. I think the Government recognised that there was legitimacy in that criticism but because of that, it responded by trying to set up all these different committees. The Government's purpose in setting up all these different committees is that when the Circuit Court appointments committee was meeting, it would be able to invite in the president of the Circuit Court and similarly, when the District Court appointments committee was meeting, it could invite in the president of the District Court. That was the way of getting around not having the presidents of both those courts on the commission. It would be much simpler and more appropriate if the presidents of the two busiest courts were members of the commission.

Another reason I think it is a bad idea to have relevant committees, and the Minister knows this more than anyone else in the room, is that sometimes, one could get a person who could apply for a job as a Circuit Court judge, the Minister may think a better candidate for the Circuit Court exists but there is a District Court vacancy at present and that would be a very suitable person to be a District Court judge.

One is not going to have a capacity for the committee to consider that someone who did not get a Circuit Court appointment might be a good District Court judge. For that reason and because of the limited number of appointments, it is more appropriate to have one commission as opposed to five committees. We seem to be obsessed in this country with having committees for everything. For instance, how often will the Supreme Court appointments committee meet? There may not be a Supreme Court appointment for two or three years whereas the really busy one is the District Court. The media pays more attention to who is appointed to the Supreme or High Court but far more important appointments from the point of view of members of the public are to the District Court because they are the judges with whom they have the most interaction. Their appointments deserve as much scrutiny as appointments to the Supreme Court.

I will not go through all of the amendments individually. They are all consequential on this proposal. We should get rid of "relevant committees" and have one commission which considers applications and nominations for appointment to all the courts. It will allow them to suggest that a person who applied for the Court of Appeal should go to the Supreme Court. It is a small country and there are a small number of positions on the Bench. It is wrong to exclude the Presidents of the District and Circuit Courts from the commission, which is something that can be perfected later. The Government has brought in this committee structure to allow them to come back in, but it would be much easier to put them on the commission. While there are a huge number of amendments here, they all relate to the same thing. That is my contribution on each of the proposals. I recognise that when we make a decision on amendment No. 9, it will deal with the rest of them.