Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Tús maith, leath na hoibre. I am not withdrawing anything. If the Minister wants to play it that way, I can play it to. It would suit the Minister better to give us some sense of security in Tipperary and not to have people sleepless in their homes and afraid of their lives. They cannot go to bed and have to lock the doors with gangsters marauding around with free rein. We do not have gardaí or anybody else to support us. I can drop my script if the Minister likes. When they come before the courts they get free legal aid - 100 times some of them - and no sentences. It is a laughing stock. Anyone going into courts in Tipperary or anywhere else any day of the week will see the carry-on. They can be seen scoffing and laughing at the gardaí. It is easy for the Minister to be laughing and commenting about me when I say a word. It is a jungle out there. There is a free rein in the jungle for the marauding gangsters and vagabonds who want to terrorise our people.

Here we are 20 years later trying to change legislation and, as Deputy O'Callaghan, said we only have an hour or two in the final days before the summer recess. It is rushed and not properly debated. Rushed legislation is bad legislation.

The Minister must give protection to the people of Tipperary that Deputy Cahill, I and others represent. They are frightened out of their wits. They have met the Minister and his predecessors, begging to be respected. They are entitled to live with some modicum of dignity, peace and happiness in their own homes. They are paying their taxes and working hard from dawn to dusk, whether they be farmers, local authority workers, doctors, solicitors, nurses or anything else. They are living in fear that their houses will be broken into at 3 a.m.

I support the Garda, I am attending a care in the community function tonight and I salute the Garda. I salute the gardaí in Cahir and Cork who recovered a horse in Cork yesterday that was stolen from Cahir at the weekend. That horse was used by a family for therapeutic measures and it was stolen but thanks be to God the Garda did great work on this occasion.

If only the Garda had enough members and if there were enough gardaí in Clonmel and Carrick-on-Suir we would not have the epidemic that is happening there. We will be like Drogheda and Longford. The Minister rubs his hand in glee as if he did not know there were not a shortage of gardaí. There is not a garda in those places. They have three, four or five gardaí on a unit in Clonmel. It is the biggest inland town in the country and those Garda units have to cover the town of Carrick-on-Suir and all the villages in the area as well. It is disgraceful.

I wish them well in Kilkenny and the chief superintendent down there is a good Tipperary man, Dominic Hayes, and they have 12 on every unit. Why are we discriminated against in Tipperary? We fought for Irish freedom. The first shots in the War of Independence were fired in Tipperary and here we are back to being treated like this. We have to mind ourselves. Will we have to arm ourselves and defend ourselves? That is what it is coming to under the Minister's watch and under the watch of previous Ministers for Justice and Equality. I do not have any animosity against the Minister but the people deserve respect and when vagabonds are brought to court it is a jungle because they make a joke of it, they are sneering at the judges and they are given free legal aid willy-nilly. They can get free legal aid 100 times over and the people who are being robbed and attacked pay for that with their taxes. Then they go into the luxury of jails that are like hotels to learn more about crime before they come out again. They are starting as young as eight and ten years old now in the drug cartel in Clonmel delivering the drugs and they have immunity because they are children. It is shocking. The Government knows who is doing it and the Garda knows who is doing it. Lives are being lost to suicide and everything else but the Government does not care. Members of the Government laugh at me instead.

The Bill seeks to establish a judicial council, which will be independent in the performance of its functions and will promote and maintain excellence and high standards of conduct for judges. That is badly wanted. Like Deputy O'Callaghan and others, I compliment the vast majority of judges who do an excellent job but they need upskilling and reskilling. The Bill will also provide means of investigating allegations of judicial misconduct and in this context a judicial conduct committee, which at long last will have lay representation, will be established. Furthermore, it will facilitate the ongoing support and education of judges through a judicial studies committee and through the establishment of judicial support committees. That is badly needed, as other Members have alluded to, because we cannot just appoint them as judges and then leave them off to paddle their own canoes. They need upskilling, reskilling and continuous education and Deputy O'Dea and others have been calling for that for years. The criminals have all the education and all the tools of the trade.

An important point is that we know that the Council of Europe's anti-corruption monitoring body, group of states against corruption, GRECO, published a compliance report on Ireland in these matters in 2017. It concerns Ireland's compliance with a 2014 evaluation report on corruption prevention in respect of Members of the Parliament, judges and prosecutors. The original evaluation report contained 11 recommendations, not 100. If we were carrying out the evaluation we would have 100 recommendations and we would not implement any of them but this came from Europe. The 2017 compliance report found that Ireland had fully implemented only three of the recommendations and had only partly implemented a further three recommendations. The Government only went half way with the 11 recommendations, which is shameful. GRECO concluded that Ireland's low level of compliance with the recommendations was "globally unsatisfactory." Those are not my words, they are the words of GRECO.

That being said, GRECO also noted with some concern the suggested lay majority of an appointments commission for the Judiciary included in the Judicial Appointments Commission Bill 2017. While it accepted that the Bill is subject to much debate, it questioned whether it is in line with European standards aimed at securing judicial independence in respect of the appointment and promotion of judges.

Further concerns were also noted at the time by the Minister on the original form of the Bill. The Minister noted two matters in particular, namely the need for the so called secrecy provision in the Bill to be removed and the need to establish a public register of financial interests for members of the Judiciary. Why can we not have that? We must have that because I have seen cases and I have been in the Four Courts when people have made allegations against judges for their involvement with banks and they are hearing cases those banks are involved in. It should not be happening. There should be no ifs, buts or ands. We should know if an eminent justice has investments in a financial institution and he or she would then have to recuse him or herself from hearing the case. It leads to rumours and potentially to falsehoods being perpetrated if we do not know, so there should be a clear register so that we know what is what and who is who. As I said, the Minister noted two matters in particular, namely the need for the so-called secrecy provision in the Bill to be removed and the need to establish a public register of financial interests for members of the Judiciary. At the time, the Minister said on the secrecy provisions that: "It is fair to say that some of the provisions intended to protect the confidentiality of the complaints process do not sit well with current understandings of accountability or transparency." He also said that he was considering amendments which might be made to these provisions. Perhaps the Minister can provide an update on these matters for those of us who did have the pleasure he had in sitting through the endless hours of Seanad debate on the Bill.

On a separate matter, when the Minister of State at the Departments of Finance and Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy D'Arcy appeared before the Seanad at the end of June, he highlighted a key amendment, namely amendment No. 21. As I understand it, following the model related to both the sentencing information and guidelines committee and the judicial conduct committee, provision is also being made for the committee to prepare draft personal injuries guidelines and submit them for review by the board of the judicial council. The Minister of State, Deputy D'Arcy, said the amendment specifies that the first draft of the guidelines must be submitted to the board no later than 12 months after the establishment of the committee. To assist it in carrying out its functions, the committee will have broad powers to obtain any information it might need. This is very much to be welcomed. It may also consult appropriate persons and bodies, including the Personal Injuries Assessment Board, and conduct research into the level of damages awarded by the courts in the State and elsewhere.

I do not want to delay the Bill unduly but it is bananas out there and other Deputies have alluded to this. We see the profits the insurance companies are making. They tell us the claims are driving up premiums but we see the huge percentage profits they have made in recent years. It is time we grasped the nettle and it is time we took a leaf out of the book of our old colonial power across the pond. We can see that they have fixed penalties and fixed awards for certain matters. What is going on here is nonsense. It is the same with free legal aid. We should have a system where it is two strikes or three strikes and a person is out. We see criminals with previous convictions who have served prison sentences for the most heinous of crimes getting free legal aid 68, 90 or 103 times. It is farcical. It would not happen in the real jungle so we have to deal with that and protect our people.

Under the amendment, the judicial conduct committee is also mandated to prepare material for inclusion in the annual report of the judicial council on its activities. These amendments were very welcome. Indeed any measure that strengthens the capacity of the Judiciary to deal more effectively with scurrilous or unfounded personal injuries claims is to be welcomed.

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