Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak about Deputy Shane Ross’s judicial appointments Bill. I commend him for his preparation of the legislation. My party, led by our justice spokesperson, Deputy Pádraig Mac Lochlainn, published the Reform of Judicial Appointments Procedures Bill 2013 in January last year which, in a similar vein to Deputy Shane Ross's Bill, sought to increase transparency and accountability in judicial appointments. Confidence in the justice system is contingent on having a Judiciary free from political control or political or other bias. It is essential that there be an independent and impartial Judiciary which is representative of the community it serves. A "truly representative Judiciary" would enhance confidence in the justice system, promote the development of a non-partisan Judiciary and advocate a culture of judicial independence. Future judicial appointees should be drawn from a wide pool of qualified candidates that fully represents the community as a key step towards the eradication of a corrosive and unaccountable system of patronage. We must not allow a "jobs for the boys" attitude to permeate something so fundamentally important as the administration of justice in the State. As well as increasing transparency and accountability in the appointment of judges, we want to see a judicial council and complaints body that would hold judges to account, with a code of ethics by which they should abide. This Government should be the very last to make political appointments to the Judiciary.

When we published our Bill last year, it was part of Sinn Féin’s campaign to end the political cronyism embedded in Irish society. For too long we have all been aware of stories from across the State of judges being appointed after their loyalty had been demonstrated to either Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, the Labour Party or the so-called Progressive Democrats. The days of the old boys' club that has dominated the legal and political spheres in Ireland must come to an end. An investigation undertaken by the Irish Independent - if I dare quote it - in November 2011 highlighted that one third of the country’s judges had personal or political connections to political parties before being appointed to the Bench. Some 56 of the 168 judicial appointees made since 1995 had such connections. They were each appointed after the introduction of the Judicial Appointments Advisory Board, JAAB, an agency designed to take judicial nominations out of the political arena. In the majority of cases, the judge's links were with one or other of the parties in government at the time the appointment was made. In other cases, the judges were relatives of leading political figures. Sinn Féin believes judicial independence is undermined by the current appointment process. The Judicial Appointments Advisory Board was established in the wake of the controversial appointment of Harry Whelehan as President of the High Court in 1994 and meant to have removed sole discretion for judicial appointments from the Government. However, there is still too much political involvement in the appointment of the Judiciary, as the Judicial Appointments Advisory Board merely provides a list of seven qualified candidates for the Government which, in turn, makes the appointments of judicial officeholders.

Although in agreement with the intention of the Bill, Sinn Féin does not agree with the model Deputy Shane Ross prescribes. It believes there should be as little political involvement in the appointments process as possible and this is where we differ from Deputy Shane Ross who in his Bill wishes to see the appointment of judges by the President on the nomination of a joint committee of both Houses of the Oireachtas. In our Bill we propose to make the following changes to the Judicial Appointments Advisory Board make-up. It should include the chairperson of the Irish Human Rights Commission who would be the chairperson of the board; the Chief Justice; the Presidents of the High Court, Circuit Court and District Court; the Attorney General; a practising barrister who would be nominated by the chairman for the time being of the Council of the Bar of Ireland; a practising solicitor who would be nominated by the President for the time being of the Law Society of Ireland; and not more than four persons appointed by the Minister who would be persons engaged in or have knowledge or experience which the Minister considered appropriate of commerce, finance, administration or persons who would have experience as consumers of the services provided by the courts that the Minister considered appropriate. It is notable that the number of lay representatives to the board would be increased from three to four in order to ensure there would be meaningful lay representation in keeping with Good Friday Agreement equivalence obligations.

We have also sought to define the criteria for appointments more fully, as what we currently have is somewhat ill-defined and overly subjective. Sinn Féin believes the criteria must be transparently meritocratic. Section 10 of Sinn Féin's Bill would also oblige the Government to make public the reasons for appointing an individual to a position within the Judiciary. Key to all our considerations in drafting was transparency and the restoration of public confidence in the system.

I will briefly reference and recognise the work of the Judicial Appointments Review Committee led by the Chief Justice, Mrs. Justice Susan Denham. At the end of last month she spoke out on behalf of the committee in a very welcome contribution on the need for a new system of judicial appointments, calling on the Government to depoliticise Ireland’s "unsatisfactory" judicial appointments process and for the introduction of new laws to ensure judges were appointed "on merit". She also called for the establishment of an independent judicial council to oversee issues such as appointments, pay talks, complaints about judges and judicial education, warning that "great damage" was being caused by the absence of such a body. These comments are very important in the context of Deputy ShaneRoss's initiative and she went on to say "political allegiance should have no bearing" on appointments to judicial office. Sinn Féin's Bill was prepared and presented for the achievement of that very goal. My party and I commend Deputy Shane Ross's addressing of the need for substantive reform, but we do not believe the model he has laid down before us is the best one to deal with judicial appointments. That said, we are happy to support the passage of the Bill to Committee Stage, on which we would have the opportunity to properly debate it, amend it appropriately and, I hope, bring it more into line with the model proposed by us early last year, which is the better approach. I thank Deputy Shane Ross for his work and hope the Minister will take this opportunity on board and allow us to progress to a system in which we would all have confidence.

See this speech in context