Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I strongly suspect there may be more nonsense spoken on this subject than perhaps any other subject that is debated in Irish society. Much of it relates to the so-called independence of the Judiciary. I will start by making a couple of points on this. To illustrate the point, I will take a couple of quotes from members of the Judiciary. In 2012, when he was the head of the Association of Judges of Ireland, Mr. Justice Peter Kelly said appointments to the Supreme Court were "purely political". In the same year, Judge Michael Pattwell said his appointment was political, and expressed the view that all appointments to the Bench by the previous Fine Gael and Labour Party Government were of judges with Fine Gael or Labour Party connections. In 2011, the Irish Independent pointed out that of the 168 judges on the Bench of the State, 56, exactly one third, had what the newspaper described as "personal or political connections to political parties".

It is not just their connection with political parties which makes members of the Judiciary part of the ruling elite in this country. It is also the salaries and the lifestyle they lead. In 2010, the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice completed a survey of judges' pay in 46 European countries. It found that in the Irish State judges' pay was among the highest of any of the 46 countries at three times the European average. It was not three times the lowest rate, it was three times the European average. I did a check before I came in here, and I stand to be corrected on these figures, but the latest figures I was able to get, which may be one or two years old and may underestimate the position, is that a Supreme Court justice would receive a salary of €197,272 per annum and a District Court judge would receive €122,512 per annum.

The social position of judges in society was illustrated rather well by an occurrence in the High Court in 2012, when a case was taken by a small construction company against Cement Roadstone Holdings, CRH. The judge presiding over the case, Mr. Justice John Cooke, had to withdraw from the case when it was pointed out he had shares in CRH. It was not €1,000 worth of shares or €2,000 worth of shares, but €135,000 worth of shares in the company. He had not ruled himself out of the case, which had been going on for a year or two, because he was not aware of the fact he was the owner of those shares, which says something in and of itself. It is not just the political connections of the judges, it is their social class, their wealth and their income. This is in a society which is more divided now than ever before on grounds of income and social class, which is part of the legacy of the Taoiseach, Deputy Enda Kenny.

The Central Statistics Office tells us the wealthiest 10% of households in the State now own more than half of household wealth at 53.8%, but the bottom 20% are in negative territory and owe more than they own. For people who find themselves at the top of the social pyramid, their psychology, class outlook and class bias are built in. How can it be otherwise? It is reflected through members of the Judiciary and is shown very clearly in their attitude to social protest. In 2003, more than 20 men and women from working class communities were imprisoned for campaigning against bin charges in the State. In 2005, five brave men, the Rossport five, were imprisoned. Injunctions against workers on strike, trade unions and trade unionists are a regular occurrence. We had this with Marine Terminals in the docks in 2009, the Greyhound dispute in 2014, and with Aer Lingus in 2014, with a threat to bankrupt the largest union in the state, SIPTU, with an injunction.

There is also a bias against the left in the Judiciary. I will give examples regarding my own party. In July 2015, one of our councillors, Councillor Mick Murphy, applied for a permit from the local Garda chief superintendent to collect funds in the run up to an election, to use for election purposes. This man is of good character and has never been convicted of any offence. The Garda superintendent turned down the application on the grounds it would encourage, directly or indirectly, unlawful acts and protests. This was at the height of the anti-water charge campaign. When the ruling was appealed to the District Court, the judge said, "We are talking about door to door collections here ... which at best could be described as an invasion of privacy in the home or nothing short of coercion upon that individual to give in circumstances where they might not wish to." The judge was Judge Michael Coghlan. He had been the director of elections for the Labour Party in the 2009 European Parliament elections in the Leinster constituency, a campaign which I presume involved going door to door and knocking on hundreds of thousands, or perhaps tens of thousands, of doors.

The verdict handed down last week by the judge in the case of the 17 year old individual in the Jobstown trial, the so-called Joan Burton protest in 2014, and I will deal with the broad principles of it and not go into huge detail, was chilling for anyone concerned about civil liberties. Judge John King found the 17 year old, who was 15 at the time of the protest, guilty of false imprisonment, a charge which is in the same league as kidnapping.

He was involved in a protest that blocked a Minister's car and he called on others to block the car. He walked backwards holding a mobile phone asking the Minister to talk to us. He may momentarily have been blocked by someone himself, thereby blocking the Minister and her adviser briefly. The implications of that ruling are that anyone involved in a sit-down protest, a form of protest employed on hundreds of occasions since the foundation of the State by many different groups, including students, trade unionists and farmers, is potentially committing a criminal offence which is in the same league as kidnapping. It is a comment on the rather tame character of journalism in this State that this ruling has not excited a greater degree of critical comment to date. Judge John King was appointed by the Fine Gael-Labour Party Government in 2015.

The Bill tinkers with the judicial appointments system in a minor way. It has some positives, which we welcome. The legislation makes it more difficult for the Government to pick its own favoured judges in a nakedly partisan way, improves the gender composition of the Bench, which could be important in domestic violence cases and so on, and provides for training for judges. Training should involve addressing the behaviour of some judges to improve their dreadful approach to members of the Traveller community who appear before the courts. I have some quotes relating to comments made in our courts in recent years about members of the Traveller community but I do not have time to go into them. Changes are needed to judicial appointments and the judicial system in significant measure. With regard to important key aspects, those changes are not to be found in this Bill.

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