Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 24 November 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality

Minorities Engaging with the Justice System: Discussion

Mr. Bernard Joyce:

I could call that a leading question. For a diversified courts system, part of that is the importance of the culture of competency training for the judges, barristers and solicitors, as the Vice Chairman has talked about. It is also for the courts to diversify that to ensure that under trial by jury one tries, as much as possible, to diversify the juries in terms or other minority groups, including Travellers and others. We need to have a system in order to do that but it has to be something as society's diversity increases. I am not aware that any Travellers have actually sat on a jury. It is probably none. To highlight that, whether it is a small court case or any case, nobody has ever indicated to me, in the course of my 30 years of work, that he or she ever sat on a jury. That indicates a lot.