Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am going to continue on the jury trials because it is an important matter. My preference is to have a jury deciding the facts and a judge deciding the compensation. Surely it would be better to allow juries to be questioned on why they made decisions rather than just calling for their abolition? As for the assumption that juries can take a dislike to somebody, judges can do the same. They are people as well, so they take a dislike to people. Maybe the difference is judges can couch their dislike in legalese and then it is grand. That is a failing of having people involved in the system, so that is the problem there.

Does the fact that we have so few judges impact on defamation cases? I am sure it does. We have the fewest judges per capitaof any country in Europe.

Jury trials are set for 30, or however many, days of the year. Given that there are very few judges, not many trials can be held within that period. Surely we should be calling for more judges rather than the abolition of juries. That would have a greater impact on the hearing of cases.

At a meeting of the Council of Europe I attended recently, we heard that Turkey had sacked 3,000 judges for political reasons. That represents 5% of the country's judges. I accept Turkey is a much bigger country than Ireland but it worked out that there is one judge for every 20,000 people in Turkey, whereas in Ireland there is probably one judge for every 250,000 people. While I have no doubt there is something wrong with the judicial system, juries are not the issue. Should we have more judges? Maybe that is a better solution.

The idea of questioning juries afterwards about why they make a decision might make more sense too. If I have time, I will ask another question.