Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

This is the first occasion on which I have been in the Chamber with the Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Flanagan. I wish him well in his new office. He brings much experience, and I commend him on his work in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. I did detect a change in tone in the Department of Justice and Equality at the weekend. His comments to his back bench colleagues around this Bill show a bit of experience of ground hurling coming to fruition.

That is good because until now the Bill was sailing through without much challenge. I have more faith now that the Committee Stage process will result in changes to the Bill. Nobody is against reform and the Judiciary cannot be immune to reform. The separation of powers does not preclude us from highlighting the need for reform. The timing of this Bill and the urgency being given to it in the context of the challenges facing our country are quite extraordinary. The Minister of State at the Department of Education and Skills, Deputy Halligan, of the Independent Alliance, has an interest in things extra-terrestrial. He believes in life in other territories and I was thinking over the past few days that if aliens came down from space and looked at this republic of ours, they would see the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, facing transport challenges such that our cities are congested to the gills. Anybody trying to get to work in Dublin this morning faced enormous delays and there will be no money for roadways in the Transport Infrastructure Ireland pipeline after 2019. They would ask is the Minister of State with responsibility for people with disabilities threatening to leave Government over our refusal to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities or over the inordinate delays experienced by children with disabilities around the country, the lack of occupational therapy, physiotherapy and basic services. They would ask is Deputy Halligan threatening to leave Government over the problem around cardiac care in his constituency. The Minister and Ministers of State I have referred to are apparently threatening to leave Government over the appointment of judges. It is a very serious issue but in the context of the challenges facing this Republic is it one that will pull down the Government? I do not think so.

There is a housing crisis, the Government has done an amazing volte faceon a commitment to have families out of hotels by the end of July. Quietly amidst the sound and fury of this Bill it has ditched that commitment and families will still be hotels in August, September, October, November and December. Meanwhile we will have a new gold-plated quango, compliments of Deputy Ross. Is it not ironic that the man who made a career out of having a go at quangos is now championing a gold-plated quango? In fact this is not even gold-plated, it is full gold, not the cheap stuff. This is top class gold from wherever it comes. To be fair to Deputy Ross when one has a career as a journalist it is easy pickings for the likes of me who googles "Shane Ross+quangos" because there is any number of headlines and articles. I got a good one he wrote on 6 January 2013 with the headline “How a Quango Failed a Nation”. It was about Transport Infrastructure Ireland. Now we are being bequeathed the judicial appointments commission office with staff, directors, all sorts of things that go with them, boards that are the subject of controversy, that will include lay people who will probably get expenses that the old Shane Ross would be submitting freedom of information requests on and fulminating about in The Sunday Independent. He has decided, however, that this is the number one priority facing this Republic and the Government has fallen into line behind him. That is extraordinary in 2017 given the challenges we face.

We do need reform, that is why Deputy O'Callaghan put forward a Bill on reform. Nobody is denying that we need reform. Deputy Bríd Smith earlier criticised Fianna Fáil's opposition to this Bill. She cited the various tribunals that have happened in this State over the past 20 or 30 years which investigated former members of this party. I would say straight back to her that those tribunals and the moral strength and conviction of the judges who ran them shows the strength of the Judiciary and no matter who appoints the judges they uphold the law, the rules that this Legislature passes. They uphold that law regardless of whether a person is Taoiseach, or a citizen, regardless of a person's standing.

All of those championing, and chomping at the bit for, this legislation, who say we are need of reform have failed to cite instances of the Judiciary systematically failing the State. It is not the Judiciary that is failing the State, it is other arms of the Department of Justice and Equality by putting things in front of the judges that maybe should not be there in the first place or by the management and challenges facing An Garda Síochána. Is it not extraordinary that the new Minister's first major legislative outing is nothing to do with the reform of An Garda Síochána, given the challenges facing it, or with asylum seeking, given the decision of the courts some weeks ago about asylum seekers and the right to work but it is this? It still misses the mark on opportunities for reform. If we are going to reform our Judiciary there are many areas we need to consider. Deputy O'Callaghan has set out a roadmap for doing that. We need to consider the gender make-up. There is a gender quota in this Chamber. I was sceptical about it but it certainly worked in 2016 and it has the potential to work even better. Should we consider a gender make-up for our Judiciary to ensure it reflects and represents those who may appear before it? Is there any serving judge with a disability who understands what it is like to live with a disability and to fight a country and a system that seems determined to fight people with disabilities? A judge with a disability would have experience of going through that system and being able to bring that experience to judgments in relevant cases. How many members of the new Irish community who have moved to this country in the past 20 years from different parts of the world are members of the Judiciary? They know why they moved here, the opportunities they sought and the challenges that new community faces such as those often presented to them by the Department of Justice and Equality in respect of citizenship rules and ridiculous waiting periods.

Yes we need reform but the manner in which this is being done will preclude reform and the political controversy associated with it will ensure that the reforms that are needed are forever associated with the stigma of this Bill and its background. We know the rushing through of this Bill was the price for Deputy Ross’s support for the appointment of the former Attorney General to the Court of Appeal, as well as the Garda station. The Minister need not be throwing those eyes over at me. He knows it. He has been around here longer than me. The only person who has been here longer than him is Deputy Ross. The reform of the Judiciary is now associated with the quagmire of that appointment.

The Minister should get out the hurl and take it to this Bill with the zest with which he has taken it to people over the years. Now that his constituency is a five-seater again, I am sure it will be sharpened up. He needs to sit down with the members of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice and Equality who have a real interest in this Bill and in reform and ask what they need and what do we want the Judiciary of a twenty-first century republic to look like. We want it to uphold the tradition of challenging that republic, and the tradition it has shown since the foundation of the State of protecting the Republic at a time when there were people trying to take it down by paramilitary means, people now associating themselves with this Bill. Judges stood up to them, sometimes at their own personal cost and at risk to their personal safety. That tradition of standing up for the Republic must be protected in judicial reform. This Bill, and the circumstances of its introduction, does not represent standing up for the Republic or the legislation but bowing down to cronyism, to the lowest common denominator of politics. That is not the way this Bill or this House should be. As someone with a long background in this area and service to this House the Minister should not let this be the hallmark of his first major Bill as Minister for Justice and Equality.

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