Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the Minister on her appointment and wish her well in the time ahead. Go n-éirí go geal léi.

The Bill is generally welcome, although others may well already have commented that here we are, yet again, taking all Stages of an important Bill in just a few short hours in a single day. While this is certainly excusable and necessary for Bills relating to emergency health or financial measures in response to Covid-19, or one-line Bills such as the Minister and Secretaries (Amendment) Bill, which was debated here last week, it seems more difficult to justify in the case of a Bill such as this.

The question that always has to be asked in such a context is whether the measures in the Bill are sufficiently urgently needed at this point for such haste to be justified. The courts have made significant adjustments to their operations within the current legislative framework. The Chief Justice, Mr. Justice Clarke, recently stated the courts have made five years' worth of progress in the past five months. The tendency to rush legislation always needs to be watched. The review of the administration of civil justice group, chaired by Mr. Justice Kelly, is due to report in the next ten weeks or so on reforms to civil procedure generally, most of which dates back to the Supreme Court of Judicature Act (Ireland) 1877. Would it have made sense to fold these amendments into a larger set of adjustments to the system, perhaps based on that report?It is proposed that temporary coroners can be appointed to a district in an emergency. I certainly have no reason to oppose that measure. However, the explanatory memorandum to the Bill states that this is needed: "where exceptional circumstances arise due to the number or nature of deaths resulting from a pandemic, catastrophic event, or other occurrence leading to mass fatalities." I hope the Government does not foresee that as necessary in the short term, against the threat from Covid, which, I hope, is slowly receding. Notwithstanding the fact that we have to be vigilant, I wondered whether that formulation was somewhat alarmist. A comprehensive review of the coroner service was carried out in 1999 and the changes in the Bill were not called for in that report, as far as I am aware. The Seanad approved the Coroners (Amendment) Act 2019 last summer and the then Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Flanagan, told the House that it represented "a far-reaching and important modernisation of our coronial law." That Act contains 40 sections and none of the provisions in the Bill before us was included at that time. I wonder why that is.

I turn to the use of electronic means for filing documents and the question of the enactment of the possibility of a statement of truth to be made when filing documents. I spoke about this in the House last week. I wish to give some context to my remarks and to many people's understanding of what was going on. The Bill was approved by the Cabinet last Tuesday. Fairly quickly, there was a response from the Law Society welcoming the fact that people were now to be released from the embarrassing position of either having to swear a religious oath or denying religion and making an affirmation instead, in the context of filing documents such as affidavits. As often happens in this country, we were relying on newspaper reports - even those of newspapers of record - for our first understanding or analysis of what the Government was proposing. It left me wondering whether there had been some kind of a leaking or sharing of the information by the Government with the Law Society at that point, prior to it being made available to the Oireachtas.

I may be wrong in what I am saying but it seems that the whole narrative of such matters can get very easily shaped if some people have access to relevant information before others. I hope the Minister will help me understand more clearly what precisely are the implications for the current system of swearing an oath or making an affirmation in the context of filing documents such as affidavits. Am I correct in thinking that the Government is seeking, via the legislation, to enable the rules of court committee to make whatever arrangements it considers appropriate in this area, and that it will then be possible for those responsible for making rules of court to have also on the table the possibility of making a statement of truth instead of the option of swearing an oath or affirmation? Is it to be left under this legislation to the rules of court committee to decide whether all these options are to remain on the table for people or whether the system of oaths and affirmations might be abolished in favour of the statement of truth? Is it the case that these provisions merely encompass cases where the electronic sending of documents is concerned, or will they potentially reach wider than that?I am not going to table amendments to the Bill, although I might want to do so depending on what the answer is. My concern is that, against a background of the early public welcoming for this legislation given in terms of decrying the existing system as embarrassing as opposed to focusing on the efficient operation of court business, which we all support, there is a failure to understand that the current system of making oaths or affirmations forms part of the way that the solemnity of the State is buttressed when people come to set out factual information for the consideration of a court, which is an issue of tremendous seriousness. All that needs be done to prevent false averments is to provide a penalty for making them. Obviously, there is a sense that something else is needed so that people have a clear idea of the seriousness of what they are doing. Hence the requirement of a statement of truth. However, it seems to be a false idea and a failure to recognise a genuine pluralism to go against a system that buttresses the solemnity of what is being done.

I have more questions than answers at this point. I look forward to hearing the Minister's reply and, I hope, contributing further on Committee Stage.