Barry Ward (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 3:

In page 4, line 39, to delete “for one further period” and substitute “for such further periods”.

On what was said about the terms and conditions, there is no doubt this legislation will substantially change the terms and conditions of coroners. It will not only result in them being limited to holding office for five years, it will also reduce to a single time the number of times they can be reappointed. There was reference to three terms but that relates to people who are in situfinishing a term, being appointed for a five-year term and then reappointed for a subsequent five-year term. That is my understanding. There is a degree to which coroners who are in the system will be lost through attrition as they come to retirement, with the exception of the Dublin Coroner who is set apart from the other coroners in real terms. Every other coroner in the country will, I presume, be allowed to finish under the current terms and conditions he or she enjoys. These are more favourable than those being proposed here, including the length of service they are allowed to give. Over time, as those people come to retirement or leave office for whatever reason, the people who replace them will be subject to the new terms and conditions set down in section 3. If anybody is to be changed within the Coroner Service after this legislation passes, any new term will be subject to the new terms and conditions and they are changed and reduced, it is fair to say.

Section 3 essentially proposes to insert a new section 10A into the 1962 Act and it is made up of four subsections. The one I am seeking to amend is section 10A(2) which reads "A coroner to whom subsection (1) applies and whose term of office expires with the passage of time may be re-appointed by the Minister for one further period, not exceeding 5 years". The five-year period is there and I have less of a problem with that because it is entirely reasonable to put a limit on any person's holding of office. It is not that the appointment cannot be renewed but that at a certain point there is a renewal process, an examination of the work done and an opportunity for another person to compete for the position. That is normal and appropriate and is part of the transparent service we have. The difficulty I have with subsection (2) is that the coroner can only be appointed for one further five-year period. That means when this legislation comes to fruition and is fully operational, a coroner can be appointed in Carlow, for argument's sake, in light of the terrible tragedy there this morning, for a five-year period and may only be appointed for a further five years. Therefore, under this legislation, the coroner could only ever serve for ten years.

I have two things to say about that. First, I do not understand why it is necessary. I do not know why we would want a situation where somebody who is doing the job well and who has the skills, competency and experience to do the job is told he or she cannot do it anymore. It seems to me to be relatively arbitrary that a five-year or ten-year limit, depending on the circumstances, would apply to a coroner, notwithstanding that he or she is doing the job well. Second, there is a real risk with this measure that we will run out of qualified people to do these jobs if they can only ever do them for ten years. There is a limited pool of people with the skills, experience and knowledge to do the job of a coroner and we will run through those people relatively quickly if we are limiting their terms to ten years.

The greatest objection I have is that I just do not see the rationale for it. It may well be that it goes hand in hand with the Civil Service element of it but, to my mind, this is a further argument why they should not be civil servants, if the attitude is that it is a temporary position and people move on to the next thing, whatever that might be. In reality, we have coroners throughout this country who have served for many years. Mr. Brian Farrell, who was the Dublin Coroner for years, is the obvious example. He became an authority on the coronial service and wrote the book on the subject, quite literally. Indeed, Coroners: Practice and Procedureis still the definitive guide for coroners throughout this country. He could not have done that if he was only doing the job for a limited period. We allowed a person with great expertise and personal experience to develop a huge breadth of knowledge that he could then share with the rest of the coroners of Ireland through the coronial service. Why are we limiting them? There is no basis for it that I can see. Maybe I will be enlightened by the Minister of State in that regard but I simply do not see the basis for it. The simple amendment I have tabled asks that we do not limit the reappointment number to one, that we do not say they can only be reappointed once. The reality is that with the five-year term built in to section 10A(1), there is a renewal process after five years. There is a reapplication, a re-examination and an opportunity to evaluate how well, or otherwise, a person has been doing the job. Why would we then limit that? Why tie the hands of the State and say we cannot reappoint that person more than once? That is what I am seeking to change. I am not saying we should not have a re-evaluation or a reapplication but they should be able to be reappointed as many times as the Minister sees fit. That gives a Minister the ultimate discretion, rather than tying his or her hands.