Michael McDowell (Independent)

I echo what Senator Stephenson has said about ignoring other voices in society. If the Irish Council for Civil Liberties thinks jury trials should not be abolished, if the Law Reform Commission thinks they should not be abolished and if the justice committee of this House and Dáil Éireann thinks they should not be abolished, who actually is demanding that they should be abolished? If we are holding the scales of justice and if the justice joint committee and these impartial, pro-citizen bodies, especially the Law Reform Commission, cannot see the argument for abolishing juries, who is moving this?

I have to be cynical and say the commitment to do this was made under the Ministry of the previous holder of the Minister's position and was done, in my view, to enlist the support of the media uncritically in an electoral context. That is what I believe was going on. It was made a manifesto commitment at the demand of the media. The media felt they did not get a fair deal from juries and felt, for the reasons I mentioned earlier, none of which I will repeat, that somehow they would fare better without juries.

It is true, however, as Senator Stephenson has said, that if we pass this legislation, there will be forum shopping. Will The Irish Times or The Sunday Times be soon before a jury in Belfast because they circulate there or will they be sued in the Republic? One court will have a jury; the other will not.

People do forum-shop. I remember that on one occasion when I was Minister for justice I said the newspaper which the Sinn Féin-IRA movement was trying to establish to take out the Irish News in Belfast - unsuccessfully, as it turned out - was a danger to Irish democracy in the same sense as the Völkischer Beobachter, the people's watchdog, was to Weimar Germany. I was sued in the Northern courts by a man who later became finance Minister in the Northern Executive. He was at that stage editor of the newspaper. I had to plead sovereign immunity and the case was dropped. He did not dare come to a Dublin jury with his case. He dropped it in Belfast. There is such a thing as cross-Border forum shopping, and it will happen, especially if one gets jury trial in one place and judge trial in the other place. Is there any reason, as Senator Stephenson says, to accord somebody the right to a jury trial north of the Border, where the juries are smaller in number, by the way, and to deny him or her that right south of the Border? I cannot see the logic of that.