John Curran (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Yes.

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate. My party and I believe the judicial appointments process needs to be reformed. The reason for this is to ensure that people are appointed to judicial office based on merit, but we have very serious concerns about the legislation as presented. As the Minister will have heard from previous speakers, we strongly believe this legislation, and the rushed manner in which it has been progressed through the House, is the result of a political decision to appease one of the Minister's Cabinet colleagues. That is the wrong reason for introducing the legislation. It has taken up a lot of time. Even the Minister's own colleagues would quietly acknowledge that this is not the best way to go about it.

As the Dáil is coming to the summer recess, it is unfortunate that issues which I, and many of my colleagues, believe should be debated in this House are being avoided. We could be debating many of the areas of responsibility of the Minister, Deputy Ross, who is not here and who has fought for this legislation tooth and nail. This really goes back to a decision made by the outgoing Taoiseach a number of weeks ago regarding the appointment of the then Attorney General to the Court of Appeal. If we could visualise what Cabinet looked like that day, members would have been around the table and this decision would have been made in the dying moments of the last Taoiseach's tenure. What went on that day, with no political interference and no outside interference, and out of nowhere, was that the long-term campaign of the Minister, Deputy Ross, to have Stepaside Garda station reopened was successful and an announcement to that effect was made.

What was going on at Cabinet? The Minister, Deputy Ross, was tweeting and texting colleagues, friends and supporters in his own constituency to tell them that, without any political interference, the Garda station in Stepaside was to be reopened. In parallel with that, the decision to appoint the Attorney General to the Court of Appeal went ahead. That was the wrong decision at that stage and the wrong manner in which to make it but it went unnoticed by the Minister, Deputy Ross. Since then, the price to appease him has been the introduction of this legislation. It is the wrong way to do it. If the Government was honest about it and recognised it for what it was, it could have dealt with this issue differently, working with the legislation Deputy Jim O'Callaghan published almost a year earlier.

The issue of dealing with judicial reform and judicial appointments based on merit is something my party and I have recognised for some time. In my view this legislation is flawed in many ways. I want to reiterate that extensive time has been spent discussing this legislation rather than other issues. We do not often get chances to bring up issues and I will not open them to full debate, but as we are coming to the summer recess, there are ongoing issues which have not been dealt with and which should have been dealt with. One example is the issue of a new national drugs strategy, which should have been published last April. There are difficulties with it. Those difficulties are not being articulated and Members of this House are not being told about them. Members should have an opportunity to discuss these issues before the Dáil goes into recess.

Likewise, we all know that there is a mid-term capital review under way, which will have consequences for years to come. Capital programmes are not switched on and off annually. There is forward planning involved. In light of the fact the mid-term review is under way and Ministers and Departments have all made submissions to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, I asked the Taoiseach if he would make those submissions public and have a debate on them. We will return after the summer recess to see the tangible effects of that review on the budget without any real and meaningful engagement by the House. A minority Government will have made a decision which will have an impact on people for years to come. That issue should be discussed in full in this House.

Tomorrow we will spend just two hours discussing the quarterly housing report. Each and every one of us as public representatives, regardless of our constituency, face people every day who are in distress as a result of housing issues. We are not adequately addressing these issues. We address them partially in committees and sub-committees, but the substantial flaws in the delivery of the required scale of a housing response should mainly be debated on the floor of this House. It is one of the significant issues which does not receive the time which it merits, yet this Judicial Appointments Commission Bill does.

I will refer back to the Bill directly after this, but in terms of Dublin and the Minister's own responsibilities, the issue of public transport is of concern. I have asked the Minister questions time and again, whether in Topical Issue debates or through parliamentary questions, and he clearly acknowledges the difficulties and that traffic congestion in Dublin is growing year on year. The problem I have with his responses is that he never gives an answer detailing specific actions we can take nor debates the actions we can take to improve the situation. Instead he says that it is an issue for the National Transport Authority or Transport Infrastructure Ireland. These are the substantial issues which I come across every day, as do the people in my constituency, yet we are spending another day in this House debating this Bill.

As I said at the beginning, we support the principle of this Judicial Appointments Commission Bill and we published our own Bill in advance. It is a pity the Bill published by Deputy O'Callaghan had not been developed in partnership because I believe it could be more meaningful legislation.

I want to look briefly at a number of elements of the Bill that are of concern. The first one has been referred to on a number of occasions, which is the composition of the membership of the commission. The Bill as put forward by the Government proposes a commission of 13 persons. Three of them are to be judges. It goes on to say that the Chief Justice and a choice between the President of the Court of Appeal or the President of the High Court will also be members. It does not specify who will fill the remaining positions, which is a considerably different composition from that outlined in Deputy O'Callaghan's Bill. His Bill proposes a membership of 12, five of whom would be judicial members and seven of whom would be non-judicial members. With regard to the seven, rather than leaving them in limbo where they could be anyone appointed by the Minister or something like that, they are from representative organisations which would have influence and an understanding of the legal system, for example the Bar Council; the Law Society; Free Legal Advice Centres, FLAC; and the Citizens Information Board. That is a good way to ensure that an appointing commission would be representative and understanding of the issues.

Deputy O'Callaghan's Bill also makes reference to the type of person and their merits from the point of view of their qualifications and their suitability. It mentions that it is important the commission be apprised of the qualities of the person to be appointed and that they would need integrity, independence of mind, moral courage and a high level of intellectual skill. Some of those qualities are actually specified in the Bill which Deputy O'Callaghan put forward.

Of particular concern is the fact that the Attorney General seems to have a dual role in this process in terms of having a role on the commission while also sitting at Cabinet. That is a fundamental flaw. If we are trying to establish an independent system, the fact the Attorney General could be in both positions is a flaw.

Significantly, I note that the commission would recommend three people. There would be no order of merit. It would be little more than a system of processing or filtering where a number of people would apply and three people would be recommended to Cabinet. I understand there is no obligation on Cabinet so I ask the question, if this Bill was introduced instead of the 1995 Act, what would have been done differently in terms of the process in respect of the former Attorney General? Having just three names being put forward without a recognition of suitability, priority or who might be the best person for the job is insufficient and such elements should be included. They were certainly incorporated into the understanding of the situation put forward by Deputy O'Callaghan.

I have spoken about the composition of the committee. There is something spiteful about the fact the Chief Justice is to be a member of the committee but not the chairperson. In most organisations, if the senior person is on a sub-committee or group, he or she will tend to have the leading role.

I do not know the reason for it, but it shows disrespect and spitefulness towards the position and I do not know what the purpose of it is. There are many reasons I believe the Bill is flawed and suggest that if it is to be processed and proceeded with, we would do well to look at the Bill introduced by Deputy Jim O'Callaghan, especially on such issues as the make-up of the commission, the role of the Attorney General and the ranking of candidates. While the Minister has acted with haste to get the Bill to this Stage, a period of pause and reflection is definitely necessary to ensure the outcome for which we are all striving, namely, that people of merit will be appointed in a transparent and open manner, is achieved.

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