I have not got very much to say on this Bill. It may possibly do some good, and I do not think it will do any harm. That is about all I can say either in favour of or against the Bill. It is desirable that technical terms should have a fixed, recognised, official, Irish equivalent. It is not desirable that different people who want to use the Irish language should use different words to express technical terms in common use, and to which over the years a particular definition and connotation have been given by usage or judicial decision.
I want to warn the Minister and whomever his advisers are going to be in this direction that this will not be an easy job. It will be an extremely difficult thing to find just the type of man who will have a good knowledge of Irish, and at the same time be in a position to appreciate the finesse of legal phraseology. I take the view that it is better in the public interest that people who are practitioners, whether at the Bar or in the solicitor's profession, should be good lawyers rather than good Irish scholars. It is much more in the public interest. The law affects people's property and rights and liberties, and there should not be any confusion about it. Occasionally in our practice, we have come across people who, not from patriotic motives, but from a desire to avoid a rigid cross-examination by a particular man who, they think, does not know Irish, resort to the use of the Irish language. I have had that experience myself, but fortunately in the particular case where the gentleman resorted to the Irish language I had a very efficient junior, who was efficient in the Irish language, and an efficient cross-examiner, so the thing did not come off.
One possible useful result of this may be that unfortunate law students who are harassed at the moment in trying to pass the examinations required by the Legal Practitioners Qualification Act may have some sort of standard to guide them in their effort to pass their Irish examination. It is well known that the examination that has to be passed by solicitors' apprentices is of an extremely stiff character. It may be some consolation to them to have some sort of dictionary or standard work of some kind which they can "swot up" for this particular examination. At the present moment, there is no doubt that the effort which has to be put in by solicitors' apprentices to learn the Irish language in order to pass the necessary examination before they become qualified as solicitors is affecting their efficiency as law students and subsequently as practitioners. They have to give so much time and attention to the study of the Irish language for the passing of the final examination that it is undoubtedly affecting the standard of their legal qualification. That is not merely an idle criticism; it is a fact. To those who have the desire to see the Irish language in common use, who have the ideal, shall we say, even to envisage in the distant future the Irish language being the common language in the courts of justice in this country, I say that the effect on young students of having to spend so much time in doing what is at best the very dry work of learning law, and who in addition have to learn law in Irish, and also how to conduct cases through the medium of Irish, is that their one desire, having got that over them, is to leave the whole thing behind them. If this is forced too far, so far from having the effect desired, of spreading the use of the Irish language in legal affairs, it will have the effect of completely killing it.
I do not know from a perusal of the text of the Bill what functions this committee which it is proposed to set up will have. It appears to be merely an ornamental body, so far as I can see from the provisions of the Bill. There are to be joint secretaries who would appear to be the real force on the committee. These joint secretaries consist of a member of the Oireachtas Translation Staff nominated by the Government and a person nominated from time to time as occasion requires by the Government. The phrasing would appear to give the impression that it is a representative legal body, but when it comes to the actual job of work that has to be done, we find that the only section which gives any light at all as to the functions, powers or authority of that committee is Section 3, whereby
"the Minister may by order declare that the equivalent in the Irish language of any specified term shall be such word or words as he thinks fit and specifies in the order."
Before making that order, the Minister shall cause a draft to be prepared by the joint secretaries and shall then request the committee to consider and report on the draft. The committee having considered and reported on the draft, the Minister may do anything he likes. That appears to me to be the sole effect of this Bill. The Minister may do anything he likes—he may ignore completely the suggestions of the judge of the Supreme Court, High Court or Circuit Court, the justice of the District Court, the barrister appointed by the Bar Council or the solicitor appointed by the Incorporated Law Society.
There is no doubt whatever that there cannot be a precise legal equivalent for an English technical term, unless there is behind the work which goes into the framing of the Irish equivalent very rigid and experienced technical advice. I assume that the idea will be to appoint some judge, barrister or solicitor to this committee who knows the Irish language. I am not at all sure that it is desirable, and I am certainly quite sure that it is not necessary, that these legal gentlemen, whether judicial personages, or ordinary practising members of the Bar or the solicitors' profession, should know the Irish language or should have a very detailed knowledge of it. The real essential is that where a technical term is about to be translated into Irish somebody with a complete technical knowledge of the precise significance of that term, a competent Irish scholar if possible, one with legal knowledge and training should give advice as to what is required.
I do not know whom the Minister intends to employ as the Irish scholars to get the equivalent Irish expression for a particular legal term. There is no indication in the Bill as to the person by whom that will be done. One of the joint secretaries is to be a member of the Oireachtas Translation Staff, and presumably he has experience in matters of this kind, but we do not know who the other person may be. I think it highly undesirable that the very difficult task proposed by this Bill should be carried out entirely by these two gentlemen, whoever they may be. I do not know who is to do the job, and there is no indication in the Bill as to the person by whom it is to be done.
I want to draw attention finally to the provision in sub-section (2) of Section 2, which sets out that one of the members of the committee shall be a judge of the Supreme Court or the High Court, nominated from time to time as occasion requires by the Government. I think it undesirable that that provision should be in the Bill. The nomination should rest with the head of the judiciary, the Chief Justice. I do not know why it should rest with the Government. The judiciary is independent of the Government and must be apart from it, and the Chief Justice appointed to that very high and very responsible position may be trusted to select the person who he thinks is the best to do the work to be done on this committee. The same vicious notion, if the Minister will pardon me for stressing the point perhaps too much, is carried into the other provisions of the sub-section in relation to the appointment of a judge of the Circuit Court and justice of the District Court. In other words, the judicial representative on this committee is to be appointed by the Government.
I submit that the proper method of appointment as regards the Supreme Court or the High Court would be appointment by the Chief Justice, and as regards the Circuit Court, by decision of the Circuit Court bench; and similarly with regard to the District Court; that is, that any judicial appointment to this committee should be made by the judicial body concerned and not by the Government. The Minister can be sure that he will get the best person, and the bad principle which lies behind the interference, or what might appear to be the interference, of the Government in a matter of this kind should certainly be avoided, if at all possible.
I do not know whether everybody will accept the principle stated in some books of jurisprudence which we learned, or tried to learn, as students, that it is better for the law to be certain than to be just. If this Bill brings any measure of certainty into the use of legal terms in Irish in connection with the administration of justice, it may do some good. I hope it will not bring a further degree of uncertainty and I also hope we will not have that curious mixture of the Irish and English languages which is so characteristic of official documents—"mise le mcas" and "a chara".
