Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I seem to be the mudguard today. I seem to be in here just for that. Everyone, and particularly the Minister, will be glad I did not have the full ten minutes.

In fairness, I will not reiterate everything Deputy Kenny has said, although I may reiterate one or two of his points. We all welcome this legislation as necessary, particularly as the reality of the world is that people think others get on better with connections. That may not always be the case but with the Judiciary we must ensure not only that there is absolute transparency but that all due diligence is done on best practices in delivering the best Judiciary we can. In addition, that must be seen to be the case and we should leave no room for anyone to question beyond that.

The proposals mentioned by Deputy Kenny must be considered, particularly those relating to the Attorney General. It should be possible to separate that political appointment from this process and it might be necessary. Beyond that we must look at injecting, for want of a better term, more lay people into the board. Everyone could see the straightforward advantages in that, and it furthers the idea of being seen to operate in a transparent and accountable way.

Many people might say that to some degree we are dealing with legacy matters and sometimes it might be seen that it is the people who are connected who get these positions. After saying I would not reiterate much of what Deputy Kenny has said, I suppose I will now do it. There may be family connections and history in the law, for example, and this clearly leads to a state of play where a large number of people with connections get these positions. From a societal perspective, we have wider work to do to ensure there can be more of a flow of other people into these positions.

We are talking about a completely changed society and it is certainly not the same Ireland in which I grew up. I was going to say the surnames of many of the friends of my son are very difficult to pronounce but many people in Dundalk might say that about my name. Many of the names are different from what we had in the 1970s, 1980s and long before that. A Judiciary should be like every other body in the State and it should reflect the people who make up our society. There is a wide piece of work we need to do on that. There is a large number of people at the periphery and we have fundamental work to do on the early interventions that could bridge the gap so as to allow people to get on the right path, whether that is into education, apprenticeships or anything else. I know this is a tangent, to some degree, and I have a tendency to go on those, but there is wider work to be done right across society.

It is very difficult to speak about the Judiciary and the criminal justice system without speaking about how we need the sector to be resourced properly. At the transport committee now we are dealing with questions of planning. We know there will be a review by the Attorney General but we must ensure the entire infrastructure is resourced, including the judicial element. Beyond planning we know the issue arising from backlogs in our courts. There is the idea that justice should be public and it should be swift, and that goes across the board. It needs to be the case.

We welcome what has happened with the Kinahan cartel. I am aware of particular cases in my constituency outstanding for a significant period and some of them involve serious criminal or violent activity or gang activity. We just need to ensure we put all the required parts in play. There is also the wider question of a citizens' assembly on drugs. We are running against ourselves at this point and we need a better solution.

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