Barry Andrews (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

Amendments Nos. 3 and 4 are designed to put in place a system to facilitate the signing of warrants where the person whose function that would normally be, namely, the District Court judge assigned to the district, is not available.

Section 32A of the Courts (Supplemental Provisions) Act 1961, which was introduced by the Criminal Justice Act 2006, established a process whereby a district judge can, even though outside the District Court district to which he or she is assigned, exercise the powers to issue arrest warrants, search warrants and other related warrants that relate to his or her District Court district. While that section has been operating well enough as far as it goes; a difficulty has been encountered where the district judge assigned to a District Court district is not just outside the district in question but for the moment inaccessible within the normal turnaround time required.

In order to provide a workable system to deal with that circumstance, these amendments propose that the President of the District Court should be able to establish a panel of district judges who, on a temporary basis, would be able to exercise the warrant-making powers in question. This power would normally be exercisable by the judge permanently or temporarily assigned to the District Court district in question; and the appropriate member or members of this panel of judges will be able to exercise that power concurrently with the assigned judge. The aim is to provide a degree of flexibility in this important matter while at the same time ensuring that there is sufficient certainty as to who can exercise what powers in respect of a particular district.

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