Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will do so. I am saying this because some of the amendments on which Sinn Féin is insisting on Committee Stage will mean that some of the people who may have tried in the past to tamper with juries and trials and to influence courts in this country and who did not even recognise those courts could actually serve on this lay committee themselves. That will happen because of the deal that the Minister, Deputy Ross, and the Fine Gael Government have done with Sinn Féin, whose members are absent today, for the support of this Bill. This is a worry to me because I actually value our Judiciary and the independence of our courts.

This is really serious. Let us go back to the trial of the late Seán Mac Stíofáin in the early 1970s. This was the last terrorist trial by jury in Ireland, after which non-jury trials were introduced. The whole jury at that trial was got to, in some cases by people sitting in this House.

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