Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Of course. It is all part of the reform of judicial services according to the infallible, inevitable, intolerable Minister, Deputy Ross. Both premises and organisations should be taken over by the State. They should be taken into public ownership and given to DIT, which is being centralised nearby at Grangegorman and is in need of extra premises. DIT is properly accountable to the State and its Legislature and it would be fitting for the Grangegorman campus to be enhanced by the inclusion of King's Inns and Blackhall Place in the context of both being brought under appropriate democratic control. It might be going somewhere then.

We can have all the semantics we like here. We can have all the suggestions, motions, potions and God knows what else, but that is what we really should be doing. We should be reining in these two institutions which are a hangover from the British state and which are really not accountable to anyone. They are not accountable to this House or to anybody else. That is very serious. That is the kind of issue that should be in the Bill, not what the Minister is talking about.

As I have said, DIT is properly accountable. I specify DIT because it is properly accountable but is also in that location near those premises. Universities and institutes of technology are accountable to the House through the Ministers and through legislation. We might then get some notice or response from the learned ladies and gentlemen in those institutions: Blackhall Place and King's Inns. I mean that. If the Bill was meaningful or if the Minister was interested he would have done that. He had the opportunity tonight to take back this Bill, to go that direction and to include that proposal or at least to discuss it with the Joint Committee on Justice and Equality or ourselves. He could at least have talked to us about it.

Legal education and the legal system would be removed from the elitist clutches of the two branches of the legal profession and placed in the properly accountable hands of third level institutions, such as universities, which are well capable of managing the task. In those universities we have boards, CEOs and people who are accountable and who can be brought before the Committee of Public Accounts. When do we ever see any of these learned institutions brought before any committee? We have certain people who were brought in before two committees that were fighting over which would get the first chaw at them. Deputy Alan Kelly was in there like a werewolf guffawing at people and wanting them in. When are these people going to come before any committees? When are they going to be in any way accountable to this House or in any way held responsible for any of the situations down there? We had the whole situation of justice delayed.

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They huffed and they puffed and they got a whole new appeals court, which I campaigned against and opposed, but we have seen little improvement. We saw some frantic action a few weeks ago - perhaps six weeks ago - to deal with cases. There were 150 per week, I believe. Other than that, people are waiting three to seven years for their cases to be heard. Justice delayed is justice denied. If the Minister, Deputy Ross, were serious, he would have brought in these people under a single professional institution and cut out all the pandering and elitism in the institutions in question. To the best of my knowledge, and unless someone can tell me otherwise, Dublin City Council maintains the area. The institutions do not even have to pay to cut the grass themselves. The legal practitioners are accorded an elite status as people we must look up to. I am not saying we should look down on them but we are supposed to look up to them and are expected to bow to them in their wigs and everything else. I am not against any of them, for that matter, but am saying the whole institution leads to elitism and a select culture. We are empowering them to go on. In this Legislature it is our duty, and the Minister's, to address this. The Minister was so ambitious and so anxious to reform the judicial system. Why start with the judicial system? Why not start with the legal profession? Many of those in that profession eventually become judges. I am not commenting on their fitness to be judges. The Government should start at the bottom and change the culture. First, it should examine the two institutions and have them shut down and placed under the auspices of one of the universities or some other body. I am not saying where but I am just suggesting DIT as it is located close to the two institutions. This is where the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Shane Ross, should have started if he had been really interested. He did not. He just came in here for media soundbites based on what he said he would do and the great man he was. Now he cannot be found. Tá sé as láthair arís. He is probably watching us on the television. If he is, I salute him and say hello to him, but why can he not come in here and acknowledge we are debating his mess, not that of the Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Charlie Flanagan?

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