Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Kelleher's face and brass neck may be open to scrutiny but that is not the case in regard to all in the Fianna Fáil Party, particularly some previous Taoisigh in respect of whom tens of millions of euro was spent on investigations because of their faces and brass necks were not open to scrutiny. I refer the Deputy to all of the tribunals that had to be conducted in this country to get to the truth.

I have been struck by some of the comments from Fianna Fáil, in particular the flowing rhetoric of Deputy O'Callaghan about the separation of powers and the sanctity of the Judiciary. His emotional rhetoric was so strong I thought at one point that he was going to break down. Given the language used one would think this Bill was a revolutionary assault on the judicial system in this country and that the entire legal apparatus of the State was under threat. Dire consequences will ensue if God forbid lay people were to meddle in the sanctity of the work of the judicial system. All sorts of horrors would unfold if the barbarians were to breach the walls of the King's Inns. Perhaps the most hilarious comment was that the Solomon-like wisdom of our impartial Judiciary could be fatally compromised, and the process sullied, by virtue of a majority of lay people on an appointment board or commission.

Listening to Deputy O'Callaghan one would be forgiven for thinking that the right of the King's Inns inherited from the British Crown - the legal system the British gave us - is all that stands between us and some sort of apocalypse. We are told that judges and the wider legal system are independent, fair and impartial and that judges are skilled and learned wise people with such specialist and accumulated knowledge that no one, certainly not a lay person, could deign to play any role in the dispensing of law. I find this hilarious, as would most working class people who have had dealings with the legal system and the dispensation of justice. I have listened to judges outlaw strikes, grant injunctions against protesters, sentence poor people to prison and defend the rights of private property over human and economic rights, as evident from the tens of thousands of evictions that have taken place in this country to favour the banks and the building societies.

My overwhelming impression of our Judiciary and legal system is that its number one defining element is not justice and impartiality or non-politically deciding on matters like King Solomon on impenetrable law or legal points. It is a class-ridden system that dispenses law, not justice, in a class-ridden way and on behalf of a particular class. I will reiterate what other Deputies have reported from The Irish Timesabout the road to becoming a barrister:

...it can be "prohibitively expensive" and the financial drain sometimes makes it impossible to continue practising law.

The Barrister-at-Law (BL) degree at the King's Inns costs €12,560. For would be barristers without an undergraduate law qualification, a diploma or legal studies required before the BL, it costs another €12,560.

Fledgling barristers have to "devil" with an experienced barrister (a "master") for at least one year and often two years or more. This mandatory work experience is unpaid. A master might pay a devil's expense but it is at the master's discretion.

This is generally but not always the case. For example, I know a young barrister from Ballyfermot, an area with a very dense population, whose family, which is a large family, had to endure great sacrifices to ensure he had that education - one barrister from an area the size of Ballyfermot. Let us not pretend that this is an open profession or a representative group of Irish citizens. By its nature, it is overwhelmingly the higher classes and the wealthy who attend the King's Inns and become barristers.

In regard to how we currently select judges, listening to Fianna Fáil Members one would swear there was some elaborate process that sifted the great and good and selected them on the basis of their accumulated knowledge and nothing else. One judge, a Fianna Fáil appointee, told us in the media last year that at least one third of the Judiciary are straightforward political appointees selected for their political alliances. If Fianna Fáil is in government, we get Fianna Fáil judges, selected not for their wisdom but for what cumann they were in. If Fine Gael is in government, we get Fine Gael judges, again selected not for their wisdom but for what networks they built up when in Young Fine Gael branches in college. Despite the hype and the mystique that Fianna Fáil and others are attempting to spin the deciding factor is not their accumulated academic Trojan work or the legal tracts that they have published but the group of select friends they made when in Young Fine Gael or Ógra Fianna Fáil during their attendance at various colleges, or the spurs that they earned in the L&H debating societies.

For those who argue against this Bill to say that what is in place is a perfect system and we risk collapsing it by sullying it with a majority of lay people on a commission is an insult to our intelligence. This is not a radical proposal. It is a mild change that will not fundamentally alter the class nature of the legal system in this country. It will sift candidates by wealth and background before they get to the Bar much more robustly than any appointments board can do. It is telling that barristers, judges and Fianna Fáil are intent on keeping the system as is, a system that is clearly political, elitist and class-ridden. Solidarity-People Before Profit want greater radical reform. We do not believe in the myth that our legal and judicial system is impartial, non-political and based on merit. We want it to be much more accountable and open. We have faith in ordinary citizens and their ability to dispense justice and fairness. The law as it is practised requires the old boys' networks of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, with the odd crumb thrown in for the Labour Party when part of a coalition Government. This Bill will not change or challenge this but it opens up the system to scrutiny and we welcome this. We will seek to push it further and we will seek greater democracy and transparency in the system. A majority of lay people on the commission will not signal the start of any revolution but it opens up debate on this area.

I am unsure about the appointment of the Attorney General to the commission. It is clearly a political appointment and this should not happen. There should not be an emphasis on the financial or commercial expertise of appointments rather the emphasis should be on social diversity and class diversity. We propose to table amendments to that effect and to open further the slight crack that this Bill provides into the class-ridden judicial system in this country.

See this speech in context