Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)

There is a time-honoured filtering mechanism, whereby matters are only referred to the Supreme Court on a point of law of exceptional public importance and where it would be in the public interest that an appeal be taken to it. That filtering mechanism has worked well since 1924. I accept what Senators Bacik and Regan have said about this being a new move in that it will abolish the rule against double jeopardy but, equally, I do not believe we should remove the time-honoured filtering mechanism to ensure only matters involving a point of law of major public importance are referred to the Supreme Court. As we have seen and as I have often said, 60% of all judicial reviews concern immigration, of which quite a substantial number end up in the Supreme Court. I am not saying this is wrong but they get through the filtering mechanism. When I started to practise law in the mid-1970s, a judicial review was the exception rather than the rule, but now it is the rule. That is one of the reasons we have a very skewed systems of matters being referred to the Supreme Court; hence the request by the Judiciary for the establishment of a court of civil appeal to make sure only cases involving a substantial point of law would be referred to the Supreme Court. That is the reason I would be reluctant to look at this issue again. A person going forward for retrial has the normal appeal mechanisms open to him or her, if he or she were found guilty in the retrial.

I will consider the matter again before Report Stage. We again asked the Office of the Attorney General about this and it did not see any reason the long-standing filtering mechanism in this respect should be changed.