Shane Ross (Dublin South, Independent)

I welcome this measure in principle. It is fair that judges should pay the same price as everybody else and that their salaries should be reduced. What is so extraordinary about this Bill is that it is necessary at all. What happened, however, is that the judges eyeballed the Government and forced it to take measures to reduce their salaries. Those who maintain that their salaries should not be reduced justify their stance on the basis that it somehow retains their independence and ensures they are not subject to the type of political pressures to which other public servants are subject. This is cant, hypocrisy and nonsense.

I support what is being done. Of course, the salaries must be reduced. A salary of almost €300,000 per year for the Chief Justice is crazy in this economic climate. The real problem here is not that judges might be subject to political pressure or that their independence might be jeopardised or compromised if their salaries were reduced like everybody else's salary, but that judges are on some type of pedestal and they are now believing their own propaganda. They believe that for some reason they are not subject to the same constraints and restrictions as ourselves and other workers in the public service. That is completely wrong. What should be attacked in this Bill is not just this, but the fact, which is not recognised or talked about, that judges have been treated like sacred cows in Ireland.

Judges are politically appointed, and they are often appointed for blatantly political reasons. District judges are directly appointed by the Government, as are Supreme Court, High Court and other judges. There is no doubt that political complexion matters when these appointments are made. That is the problem that should be tackled. These people are appointed by the politicians in power. There have been many cases, and I do not wish to name people who are outside this House, of people who are members of political parties or who have loyalties to political parties being appointed as judges. The Judicial Appointments Advisory Board has an input into the process. It provides a list of people to the Minister. The Minister brings the list to the Cabinet and it can appoint one person from the list of seven. The list will inevitably contain the names of people who are acceptable to the Government, not least because the Judicial Appointments Advisory Board is stuffed with political appointees as well.

That is the real problem with the Judiciary. We need an accountable Judiciary whose members can either appear before an Oireachtas committee, similar to what happens in America, or whose members can be removed. Judges are virtually immovable. The problem is the fact that they are political appointments and that they are so permanent.

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