Jim O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay South, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank all Members who made contributions on the debate for reading the Bill and for the thoughtful contributions that have been made. Many Members spoke about issues concerning the Judiciary that go beyond the appointments process. I do not intend to reply to them.

The debate indicates that there is a necessity for legislation in respect of a judicial council, something that was promised and which the Judiciary sought. This is a matter with which the House should deal.

I refer to the comments made by the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Frances Fitzgerald. I would like to deal with one or two issues in response to what she said. She made a number of comments in respect of the Bill. She said in respect of appointments for the position of Chief Justice and the presidents of the courts that I sought to limit the appointment of those persons within the courts. That is not correct. In respect of the proposal I have for the appointment of an individual as Chief Justice, I propose that any member of the superior courts would be eligible. That would also apply in respect of the President of the Court of Appeal and the President of the High Court - any superior court judge would be available for the appointment.

The Circuit Court presidency should only be available to an individual who is a member of the circuit court, and I say the same in respect of the president of the District Court. I do not think it is a good idea that individuals who are not judges are appointed to positions where they would be running courts.

The Tánaiste said, in the context of her Bill, that she would like to see a facility for District Court judges to be eligible for appointment to the High Court. This House and the Government should be careful about promoting judges through the different ranks of the Judiciary. There is an obvious necessity to appoint High Court judges to the Court of Appeal or from the Court of Appeal to the Supreme Court. Sometimes Circuit Court judges are appointed to the High Court. However, if District Court judges are eligible for appointment to the High Court, I would be concerned that some ambitious individuals may seek to curry favour with the Government so they could get those promotions. We do not want that in the Judiciary.

A judge looking for promotion is not a good judge. Deputy Jonathan O'Brien made reference to the removal of judges. That is a matter to be dealt with by the House and I believe there is legislation in place to deal with such an issue, if it ever occurs, under the Constitution. The supervision or disciplinary matters in respect of the Judiciary are matters to be dealt with by the proposed judicial council.

I welcome Deputy Penrose's speech. He made a valuable contribution with regard to my statement. It is the Government's constitutional duty to fill vacancies when those vacancies appear in courts. The Government can take a period of time in which to nominate individuals to fill those vacancies, but if the Government delays unnecessarily or disproportionately then, in my view, it is getting close to breaching its constitutional duty to fill those positions.

Contributions were made also by Deputy Mick Barry but I am not sure whether or not the Deputy intends to support the Bill. He said that there are parts of it he welcomed and part of it was merely tinkering with the legislation. I note also the comments made by Deputies Clare Daly, Mattie McGrath and Eamon Ryan. I will correct one of Deputy Ryan's assertions. Sometimes politicians have a slightly incorrect view of lawyers and what happens and the individuals who are barristers. I think it was Deputy Ryan who said there were a lot of barristers who seek to affiliate themselves with political parties in the hope that this will promote their careers. In my opinion, it is extremely damaging to a barrister's career to get involved in politics. People will think the barrister is not serious about his or her career and it can have a damaging impact. If I was giving advice to any young barrister who was anxious to develop a strong practice, I would say stay away from politics.

I will now turn to the issues that were raised by the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Ross, in his speech. The Minister made a number of points, some of which are valid, but I fear that he is missing the main point. The Minister believes that this is all some cosy cartel where lawyers are getting together with judges and appointing their mates to the Bench. That is not correct. The biggest problem this State faces currently is that we cannot get enough quality people to apply for appointment to the superior courts. The Minister, Deputy Ross, refers to it as "JAABs for the boys". I have been working in the law library for 23 years and I have never heard that. What I have heard is that people are desperate to try to get applicants to apply for positions on the Bench and in the past six or seven years that has changed considerably. It used to be the case that people, when they got the age of 55 and having had a good strong practice as a lawyer, would apply to do a job as a High Court or Supreme Court judge. That is not happening anymore. It is a real crisis. We have to ensure that we seek to attract the best people to fill these positions because they play an extremely vital and important role in our society.

I say to the Minister that I am happy to work with the Government and with him on any legislation that the Government intends to introduce. We are told that the Government is going to introduce legislation shortly. I do not know what "shortly" means in a political context but I know that under the supply and confidence agreement that my party has with Fine Gael, there is a requirement on any Bills that pass on Second Stage to be brought to Committee Stage within ten weeks. That brings us to the beginning of January 2017 and I want my legislation before the committee at the beginning of January. The Fine Gael Party has an agreement with my party that this will happen. If the Minister, Deputy Ross, knows that his legislation is going to be introduced in the Dáil before then, so be it. We could look at it and maybe put both pieces of legislation to Committee Stage at the same time. If, however, it is not in on time and if it is not in by January this Bill will be proceeding on Committee Stage. Lyndon B. Johnson said that the most important trait in politics is being able to count. I know that in the House there are approximately 80 Members who will support my legislation. I do not, however, want to put myself in a position where I am in conflict with the Government; I want to work with the Government. I would have thought that the appropriate mechanism would be for the Government to put down amendments to my legislation if it wants to get its proposals in at the same time.

The Minister, Deputy Ross, said that the Judiciary is desperate for this not to happen. That is not correct. The Judiciary put in a submission a number of years ago with regard to how it wanted the appointment process changed. The Judiciary accepts and recognises that judicial independence will be enhanced if there is a transparent process whereby people are appointed to the Bench solely based on merit. There is no dispute in the House that people in the past were appointed to the Bench because they had political affiliations. Not all of them and not even the majority of them, but a lot of them were. As I said at the outset, a lot of them were appointed to the Bench despite the fact that they had political affiliations with a party which was not in government at the time. It is incorrect to state that there is some great conspiracy out there trying to stop this radical legislation. I do not deserve any credit and I do not deserve any medal for bravery for introducing this legislation. It is perfectly coherent legislation that all Oireachtas Members should be thinking about. It is something that should have been done in this House long ago, I accept that. I welcome the fact the Minister, Deputy Ross, is interested in this area but it is instructive that the Minister, who has been in the Oireachtas for 35 years, is now putting it forward as the main issue of concern in government. In my respectful submission the Minister, Deputy Ross, has misidentified what is the problem. The problem is not that this is a cosy cartel: it is not. The problem is that we are finding it difficult to attract the best persons to be appointed to the Bench. It is also important that we should retain governmental control of this process, as required under the Constitution.

My final point is around an area where there was some dispute with regard to the membership of this board that would make recommendations. In my view, the board should be chaired by the Chief Justice. As I said earlier, if I have an interview panel to select a person to be an editor of a newspaper, I want somebody on that interview panel who knows how newspapers operate. The last thing I want is a collection of lawyers on an interview panel deciding that they think they know how it operates. Being a judge is a very specialised and particular skill. We need to have people with knowledge of that and who know how courts operate. We do not want this mythical group of lay people, who know nothing about the courts, who give the appearance of transparency, who then sit in a room looking at each other wondering how to decide between two competing individuals. For that reason, we need to have people with knowledge of the courts in this body.

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