Shane Ross (Dublin Rathdown, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank all those who contributed to the debate yesterday. In particular, I thank those who supported the Bill: Deputy Mattie McGrath; the Sinn Féin spokesman, Deputy Jonathan O'Brien; Deputy Catherine Murphy of the Social Democrats; and others, but I welcome all of the contributions to what is an extraordinarily important debate. If I have been taught anything in dealing with this subject and this debate, it is how incredibly difficult it is to tackle reform. After 30 or 35 years in this and the other House, I am beginning to learn that getting a mild reform through the Houses, away from the bastions and official Ireland, is a much harder project than I had anticipated. The Bill seeks to reform fundamentally the judicial appointments system. It has prompted an avalanche of responses from predictable quarters but at a volume I had not expected and which has taught me that the difficulties in addressing issues such as this sort are legion but worthwhile. This is a Government Bill inspired by the Independent Alliance and it will pass through both Houses after a very full and not a rushed debate. Nevertheless, I am aware of the fact that it has stoked up and mobilised powerful forces outside this House against some of its measures. I will address these issues.

I will be perfectly honest with every Member of the House: being a Government Bill, it is not radical enough for me. I had something a little more radical in mind. However, it is, as all partnership Governments sometimes find is necessary, a compromise and an agreement between various groups. It is also particularly sensitive to the issues which have been addressed by people outside and inside the House, particularly the Judiciary. There have been talks with the Judiciary and there has been absolutely no wish to offend it in any way and no indication from here that it has in any way done a bad job - quite the opposite. I would like to have seen a more radical Bill in that I would like to have seen one name come to the Minister for Justice and Equality, not three, to give politicians less choice. I would like to have seen a smaller rather than a larger commission of 13 and other such measures. It is, nevertheless, a hugely progressive Bill which addresses some of the issues which have been the tip of the iceberg in dealing with problems in Irish life which extend far beyond the selection of members of the Judiciary.

Having said it is a Government Bill, I wish to address one or two comments which have been directed against me as someone who has been very involved in preparing it. First, the Leader of the Opposition said yesterday - I know that exchanges across the floor can get a little heated - that I had some vendetta against the Judiciary, the legal profession and others, but nothing could be further from the truth. My family is steeped in legal tradition and the legal profession.

My father was managing partner of a firm now known as MOPs, Matheson Ormsby Prentice. I was perfectly used as a young child to members of the Supreme Court, barristers, solicitors and people like that pottering through the house from time to time. It is something with which I am fairly comfortable and familiar but I certainly do not have any grudge or axe to bear against these people or this institution. I state on the record, in accordance with what the Minister for Justice and Equality said yesterday, the record of the Judiciary in this country is something of which we can generally be proud. This is not in dispute. Everybody in the House has agreed on this. They are not infallible and do not have some sort of papal right to speak ex cathedra. We should be allowed to criticise them, of course, and we do so, sometimes at our peril in this House. We should probably be allowed to poke fun at them from time to time like we do at other people. This does not indicate a lack of respect.

What judges do so well is they judge. What judges have done so well is they have made judgments and they have done it well, and it is something of which we should be proud. The method and the way they are selected is a totally and utterly different issue, and the numbers and input into this is a totally different issue. This is what is being debated here today and what was debated so eloquently last night by many others. If people ask me whether I have an agenda the answer is that I do. I have had an agenda all my political life on this. It is that political interference in the selection of people who sit on State bodies, in positions of State or in positions involving the public purse should be reduced to a minimum. This agenda still exists and anybody who knows me will know that I have already introduced new methods in my Department whereby one name comes up to the Minister for selection to State boards. This gives me a very limited input to say "Yes" or "No". The same principle should be applied to the selection of judges.

The objective of the Bill primarily is to reduce, if it is not able to eliminate, political interference in the selection of judges. This is the primary aim, and to do it as soon as possible. What it also aims to do is allow ordinary citizens to have a pivotal input into the selection of judges. Who is afraid of ordinary citizens? It seems many people inside and outside the House do not want to see people with skills but who are ordinary citizens being involved in a meaningful way in the selection of judges. I do. I do not want to see politicians doing the job.

We know that for a long time political interference has been the curse of the system in the Judiciary. Many people speak about the Judicial Appointments Advisory Board, JAAB, the system in existence at present. They speak about it as though it were some sort of sacred system that people go through, which arrives to produceipso factoindependent judges. We have been fortunate, of course, in what the judges have done so well but this does not mean the system of selecting them is fair or is right. Yesterday was marked by the fact that people from Fianna Fáil and other parties and groups admitted perfectly openly that the system at present promotes people, and has been doing so, on the basis of their political colour. It has also been doing worse as it has been depriving people, good barristers and lawyers, from reaching the pinnacle of their ambitions and talents because they were of the wrong political colour. I want to see an end to this system. I want to see, as the Government wants to see, a better system. The way to do so is to pass the Bill and fix the JAAB and its abuses once and for all.

When we speak about lay people, and when we speak about ordinary citizens of whom so many people are frightened, we mean lay people. It was said last night that lay people already appoint judges or make recommendations. On the JAAB there are three lay people, that is correct, but from where do they come and who are they? The Ceann Comhairle need not worry as I will not name them. The lay people are appointed by the Minister. I do not even know who they are at present, I should have looked it up before I came here. After the JAAB was introduced the three lay people were paraded as the lay input. I will not say who they were, but let me tell the House what happened and what positions they held. Under the Fianna Fáil-Progressive Democrats Government of 2002, three were appointed. I am sure they were all good people. One was a former Fianna Fáil director of elections for Dún Laoghaire. Another was a former Fianna Fáil candidate for the European Parliament and the third was a Progressive Democrats supporter. It cannot be a coincidence that those particular jobs were awarded as a ratio of 2:1. It cannot be a coincidence that the two Fianna Fáil supporters survived the period of Fianna Fáil's tenure in government. This is what was happening. I am not saying Fianna Fáil are the only people who do this. Everybody has been at it. This system has to end. We have to put an end to this happening. This is what the Bill addresses.

The problem with the Bill and the main opposition to it is that people say the Judiciary does not have enough input and has to have a majority, and that out of the 13 members there should be seven lawyers and not six. This was very carefully thought out by those of us involved in the Bill. The input from the Judiciary will be massive. There will be three members of the Judiciary on the commission, namely, the Chief Justice, the President of the High Court and the President of the Court of Appeal. There will be the Attorney General and two other lawyers, one from the Bar and one from the solicitors. The place be bursting with legal advice, legal expertise and people offering good counsel about the appointment of individual judges. I do not know what they want, but what we want to see is a fair system which has enough legal advice, not something which is totally and utterly dominated by judges and lawyers. This is what we have constructed in the Bill. What we have put in is a majority of ordinary citizens. Last night, Deputy Mattie McGrath made a point which was perfectly legitimate. We trust ordinary citizens in other situations. We trust them emphatically to sit on juries to find people innocent or guilty and to make really important decisions. Nobody I know ever questions the jury system. Why can we not trust ordinary citizens to take important decisions about the selection of judges with the benefit of at least six lawyers to give them advice?

It seems self-evident that this is a perfectly legitimate argument. Why do we need to have a majority of legal people? Is it so the people they prefer and know should get through? People who are independent and impartial of the legal complex should be able to make that decision. The decisions that judges make affect the lives of everybody forever. They should reflect, in many ways, the diversity of society themselves. What we have tried to do in this Bill, which I agree is imperfect in many ways, is ensure that people who have the requisite skills but not a judicial background or judicial ties have an input into this commission. In regard to the point that not putting the Chief Justice in the chair is a kick in the teeth for the current or next appointee, that is untrue. The Chief Justice will not be in the chair for a very good reason. The chair is the most powerful position and it should not an insider who is in the chair in any position of this sort in any walk of life. It is an institutional decision and not a personal one about anyone. It is to give the lay majority independence and a stamp of credibility and authority to judges when they are appointed. We should not be frightened of this. We should not be frightened of ordinary citizens with particular skills taking important decisions. They will take well-informed decisions on the advice of judges and drawing on their own experiences and that of the other 12 people accompanying them at the table.

There are other issues in the Bill which are important. Does anybody in this House know how many interviews the Judicial Appointments Advisory Board, JAAB, with all its political imperfections, has held for judicial appointments in the past 22 years? It has had the power to do it but it has not held a single interview for a judicial appointment in 22 years. It has managed, however, from time to time to throw up as many as 40 candidates who were successful in their applications for the District Court. Everybody knows what happens then. Those candidates are recommended to the Minister who then selects one candidate. The JAAB has done a good job for some because the politicians have always got their person through. The JAAB has been able to do that for them. It has worked for them but it has not worked for those people who the JAAB has told they cannot come through or at least not until the Government changes. That system must be ended and substituted with something constructive.

Last night, the media and some contributors to this debate misinterpreted a statement made by the Minister, Deputy Flanagan, when he said that the heads of the two courts who appeared to have been left out would be included in the process.

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