I move the amendment:
In page 2, lines 8 to 11, to delete "the Supreme Court and the High Court and Courts to be called respectively the Court of Criminal Appeal, the Circuit Court and the District Court" and substitute "A Court of Final Appeal, the Court of Criminal Appeal and the Courts of First Instance."
This is a drafting amendment. The occasion of the amendment gives me the opportunity of saying that the points made by Deputy McGilligan on Committee Stage regarding the position of the Court of Criminal Appeal have been considered. I am satisfied that the Constitution does not restrict the courts to be established to a Court of Final Appeal and Courts of First Instance and that it is open to us to establish other Courts, such as the Court of Criminal Appeal.
I have also considered the suggestion of Deputy McGilligan that the Court of Criminal Appeal should normally consist only of High Court judges, but here again I have come to the conclusion that the proposals in the Bill, which re-enact the existing law, are satisfactory. They have, in fact, operated successfully for a great number of years and, if only for that reason, I would be slow to make any change unless there were to be some compelling advantage to be gained from it. I do not think the proposals would represent an improvement, because I think, as a matter of principle, there should be a representative of the Supreme Court included in the Court of Criminal Appeal. If there is not, there might be a feeling in the minds of the accused persons—there would be no justification for it, but it might be there just the same—that a Court of Appeal, consisting of colleagues of the judge, against whose decision the appeal is being taken, would be less likely to upset that decision than a court having one or more representatives of the Court of Final Appeal.
