Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

If the Minister is trying to introduce an irrelevant and slightly offensive tone to this debate, he started off on the right foot. He informed the House that I was probably involved in the campaign to prevent solicitors from becoming judges of the High Court, or else that I was too busy in the Law Library to participate in the debate while I was a barrister. If he checks the record, however, he will find I supported the amendment to the law to make solicitors eligible to be members of the High Court. He will also find I was involved in the drafting of the legislation that made solicitors eligible to be members of the High Court, and that I was either Attorney General or Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform when the first solicitors were appointed members of the High Court. If he carefully checks the record, he will find I encouraged solicitors to become members of the High Court. Far be it from how he portrays or imagines it to be, it is the diametric opposite. I was always happy with the idea that solicitors would become members of the High Court.

Although the Minister's memory appears to be fading slightly in this respect, he may recall the only precondition that was set for solicitors to become members of the High Court was that they should have experience of the workings of that court. It might be a strange precondition to apply, but it would impossible for a barrister to practise for ten or 12 years yet never to have seen the inside of the High Court. He or she would be a very strange barrister.

In the case of the solicitors' profession, on the other hand, of which the Minister was then a member, it would be entirely possible, especially if operating in one of the larger firms in Dublin, to be an eminent solicitor yet never to have seen the inside of the High Court nor to have participated in any High Court litigation in one's life. I have been in the Four Courts in the company of solicitors who had never seen a jury sit in their lives. That is how closeted some solicitors are. I have seen solicitors who, while waiting for another case, attend a jury trial for the first time in their lives, even though they were ten or 20 years in practice.

The law was changed, I was there, I stood over it and I implemented it. I am proud of the people who were appointed on my watch and with my active encouragement to the High Court from the solicitors' profession. I am proud of them not merely because they were pioneers at the time, seeking appointment with the active encouragement of the Minister of the day, but also because they turned out to be exemplary members of the High Court and have served this country well. The implication of the Minister's barbed remarks that I was an opponent of solicitors becoming eligible to be a High Court judge is entirely incorrect. I played a significant role in making it possible and encouraging it to happen.

The Minister also said that based on my remarks yesterday he thought it was somehow mandatory for District Court judges to become High Court appointees. I said nothing of the kind and only wishful thinking could lead the Minister to think I somehow implied it would be mandatory for district judges to become High Court judges. I am capable of reading a section, and I know the distinction between eligibility and the fact that one might or might not be selected. I made it clear, and I reiterate, that I cannot imagine circumstances in which a District Court judge would seek appointment to the District Court Bench.