Amendment No. 1 is out of order.
Committee on Finance. - Courts (Supplemental Provisions) (Amendment) Bill, 1962—Committee Stage.
SECTION 1.
I accept your ruling, Sir, but in any research I have done, I have not found a ruling of this nature in regard to previous amendments to measures in this House. It would appear this is a new departure in the matter of ruling amendments out of order. I accept the ruling of the Chair.
I hope the Deputy does more than that—he has to accept it. The fact is a Select Committee is set up by a substantive motion of the House on its own initiative. An amendment of this nature is quite contrary to constitutional procedure.
I move amendment No. 2:
In lines 11 and 12, to delete ", with effect as from the 1st day of November, 1961".
I find it difficult to discuss this by itself and I may have to go into some of the suggestions that have been made in the Bill and some of the amendments that are down opposing the Bill. When this was first discussed, we were discussing it in an air of uncertainty, but we have come through the Budget Statement since and we know where we stand with regard to certain contrasting payments that are to be made.
This refers only to retrospective payment.
What is going to be made retrospective, the increase in salaries. That must be built into the framework of the payment to relate back to 1st November last year. On the Budget, we were told that pensioners were to be treated better. Pensioners were divided into two classes, one of which was what were called the service pensioners and the Budget Statement of 10th April, 1962, said that to bring the service pensioners up to an appropriate figure having regard to the depreciation of money required £1,300,000. The Minister said that could not be afforded; what he proposed to do was to give a quarter of that sum as from 1st August of this year, and to give another quarter some time later. All we were told was that the full year would cost £675,000, that is to say, bringing the pensions up half-way to what is required to meet the increased cost of living because of the depreciation in the value of money. As far as Civil Service pensioners are concerned, basing them entirely on the cost of living, they will get one-quarter of what they should get.
These are not pensions; these are salaries.
I am talking about pensions.
The Deputy is talking irrelevantly as usual.
Pensions are included in the Bill relating to judges. Surely the Minister understands that if a judge is to get two-thirds of an amount, and that amount is increased by £2,000, he has increased his pension rights? It is in relation to that that I am making my statement. Further, these Civil Service pensioners will get on a calculation based entirely on the cost of living, without anything for improved standards, or anything like that, one-quarter starting on 1st August of this year.
With regard to what are called social welfare pensioners, we were told, in a generous burst by the Minister for Finance, that they were to get something, something which would not relate entirely to the cost of living, but there was a feeling that this section of the community should be allowed to share in the general increase in the national prosperity, and that share in the general increase in the national prosperity works out at half-a-crown a week. The payment of that will not start until some time later in this year.
I take this provision with regard to the judges; whatever the provisions are, they are to date from 1st November, last year. That means we are giving them a bonus of half a year into their hands. Why? In the speech made by the Minister on Second Reading he said that the date proposed had emerged as the date from which payments were being made. Of course, it has not emerged as the date where other pensioners are concerned — by no means. While it has emerged as a date possibly for those who forced advances by industrial activity, as they will, of course, get whatever date they can secure by their own industrial strength. I have heard no argument as to why the members of the Supreme and High Courts should get a bonus of a half year's increase, but that is the bonus increase that is being given to them. The Minister said it was entirely due to the fact that this date had emerged as a proper date for these retrospective payments. That was the way in which he tried to gloss over this whole thing.
It is, of course, well known that the effect of this will be to give an increased pension to a retired judge. I think I am right in saying that. It will increase the pension this retired judge has acquired by a sum of some £400 per year. I do not know why that should be put forward as something we should accept at this time. The person concerned became a High Court judge in the first instance: he was President of the High Court. He then became President of the Supreme Court. The salaries offered in respect of both these posts were clearly sufficient to attract him to take them. Having gone through many years' service, he retired on an age limit on a pension amounting to two-thirds of his emoluments at the date of his retirement. Any of the arguments used about attracting the best men to the post can be applied to him, because he had been attracted and had served in the High Court and in the Supreme Court and had taken his pension. I see no justification whatever for antedating the payment to be made to that individual by way of pension and, of course, in respect of his pension only.
With regard to the other matters which are all to be antedated, I want to single out the position of the Chief Justice under this new legislation. What I say now will not apply with the same accuracy to the other members of the Supreme Court or to the President of the High Court, who is the second senior judge of the whole group; but I take the Chief Justice as an example because one can make an argument of an individual. I want to disclaim immediately any question of criticising that particular individual. As far as I know him, and I know him quite well, I do not think the financial motive would be of any great consideration to him. I think he would be quite agreeable to continue on the old rate, and I cannot believe is an individual who would be, so to speak, demanding in an aggrieved way an extra amount of money.
What are we going to do with regard to him? We will give him £6,000 a year with effect as from 1st November, 1961. His colleagues will get, the highest of them, £4,500, and the other judges, £4,000. He will be put on a basis of £1,500 more than the highest paid other member of the court and £2,000 more than any of the ordinary judges of the Supreme Court. I took the opportunity of the delay that has occurred to make inquiries with regard to other countries. The President of the Federal Supreme Court in America gets a slight increase on the salaries his colleagues in the Supreme Court get; it is 500 dollars, a very slight increase, and that is the only addition made to the salary of the Chief Justice in America.
What is the salary?
The salary is 35,000 dollars, £12,000. That man presides over a court which caters for 50 individual states and for about 180,000,000 of a population. We propose to give, for our less than 3,000,00 of a population, and threequarters of a state, our Chief Justice £6,000. We are proposing more particularly to give him £1,500 more than the next highest paid judge and £2,000 more than the ordinary judges of the High Court—£1,500 more than most of them and £2,000 more than High Court judges. I cannot understand why that enormous increase has been suggested for this individual.
As the debate ran, I found it hard to get any argument for the proposal at all. The Minister skated away from the analogy based on the cost-of-living figure but, in the end, he was accepting that this was a cost-of-living matter. He related it to the salaries paid in the public service. Of course, the salaries in the public service are also related to the salaries paid in outside occupations. To my astonishment, I found the main argument the Minister had was that, of the 57 judicial persons concerned in this Bill, 52 have salaries which do not exceed those paid to the holders of certain posts in the Civil Service, who were chosen for comparison. When one thinks of the way in which the 57 judicial people with whom we are concerned here achieved their appointments, and remembers the way in which the highest posts in the Civil Service are filled, the fallacy of the analogy is immediately apparent. Those who are heads of Departments, secretaries and deputy secretaries——
Will the remuneration of judges not fall for discussion later on?
Yes, but I suggest that merely to talk about a date is not of any great substance, unless one thinks of what the date is related to.
That is so; but the Deputy is confining himself almost entirely to the remuneration rather than to the retrospective element.
All I want to say is that I am asked to vote a salary of £6,000 for the Chief Justice. I am asked to do that because the salaries of the 57 judicial persons are below the salaries of the highest paid personnel in the Civil Service. I am relating my arguments entirely to the Chief Justice. The Chief Justice did not achieve his particular rank by way of examination, or anything else.
I am endeavouring to avoid duplication in debate.
I should like to argue the whole thing together; I shall not repeat myself.
I understood that the discussion would fall on the Deputy's other amendment, No. 3.
As they come in a particular order, I must discuss the amendment referring to the time, first of all.
That is so, but I hope there will be no duplication.
There is not much use in discussing the date from which these increases will be paid, if we do not discuss what we are paying.
That is all right, as long as there will be no duplication.
There will be no duplication. The Minister refers us to the highest salaries in the Civil Service but there is no comparison whatever there. The people who are recruited to the judiciary do not have to stand an examination. I had something to do with the Department of Finance when we were seeking to establish the Civil Service of the new State and I know something of the methods by which people were recruited to the Civil Service. The examination adopted in that instance was similar to the examination for the old Indian Civil Service which was one of the stiffest examinations in the world ranging over a great variety of subjects. There was tremendous competition and for some of these people we developed what has become known as the junior administrative officers' examination. I know very few of those on the Bench of this country at the moment who could have taken the junior administrative officers' examination and these people have to wait a great many years before they can obtain any of the higher posts in the Civil Service.
The Deputy is now forgetting that it was on that basis that the salaries were originally fixed. The Circuit Court Judge was related to a certain rank in the Civil Service.
It may be related to it but to tell me that you are getting the same standard is nonsense. I do not care what was done in the past and I do not agree that there is any comparison between the highest post in the Civil Service and the people who are on the Bench at the moment.
Everybody is wrong but yourself.
It is a wrong comparison to make. There is no comparison at all between them.
It is the only comparison you can make.
There is another one which can be made and I will come to that in a moment. It has been said that we will not get the best unless we pay them and there was also the confused statement made that people were making so much at the Bar that they would not take judicial posts at the old rates. In the Second Reading debate, it finally emerged that there was one person who was invited to take a post and would not take it. It was not stated that his refusal to take that post was purely on salary grounds. Somebody else made the calculation that there were two or three people who were earning so much at the Bar that they would not take this office. That argument defeats itself because, in the Second Reading debate, the Minister was speaking of earnings of £8,000 a year and upwards at the Bar.
There are a certain number of people who are so earning, but to go on and say that unless we give the Chief Justice £6,000 a year, people would not be attracted to the post is not an argument that convinces me. No matter how high you put the salary to attract the best men, it is not the best men who are offered the posts. I have a fair knowledge of those who have been at the bar and who have gone on to the Bench and I can only think of one person alone in whose case the statement can be made that the person concerned was the Leader of the Bar at the time he was appointed. It is true to say that when a judicial appointment comes to be made, it is not a question of getting a suitable candidate but the trouble is that people who think themselves suitable are falling over themselves to get the appointment.
They are not necessarily suitable.
I am meeting the argument that you have got to buy the best talent and that the best talent can be recruited only by paying a certain salary. The argument being made by the Minister is that you have to pay a certain sum of money to get the best men but it is generally not the case that you get the best men.
When you have people applying who think they are qualified and who are not qualified, how are you to know?
The best men are not always appointed.
Politically qualified, you mean?
I do not mean politically. There is no examination for the post of Taoiseach.
There is an election and that is the toughest examination you have to pass.
It is absurd to consider this matter only in regard to salary. I am taking this figure of £6,000 as an example. The situation at the moment is that a judge must retire at the age of 72 and that he may retire at the age of 65 if he is lucky enough to have 15 years' service. If he was appointed at the age of 50, he can retire on full pension at the age of 65 and the pension is two-thirds of the emoluments of the post at the time of retirement. If I take £6,000 as the salary of a Chief Justice who has served for a number of years, it means that he goes out on a pension of £4,000 a year.
I made inquiries at various actuarial sources and I discovered that no matter what a man's earnings might be, he would find it hard to set aside enough money to give him a pension of £4,000 a year at the age of 72. I got calculations made as to what would be the price of an annuity for a person aged 72, taking the ordinary rate of expectation of life into account, and I was told that it would cost approximately a sum of £30,000. What we are proposing to do now is to allow a person to serve for a number of years at £6,000 a year and at the end of that time, to provide him with the equivalent of a gift of £30,000. That is a substantial sum and I do not know what the equivalent figure in the Civil Service would be.
There is exactly the same provision in the Civil Service.
There are any number of people who take posts on the Bench who are not easily attracted by the salary. I am quite sure that many members of the Bar who are earning big sums of money would take half their earnings in order to get on the Bench. A man making a very big sum of money at the Bar is living a very hard life. It is a very inhuman profession in that way. A man who gets to the top of the tree in the counsel's profession at the moment is not getting much in the way of relaxation during his working days. Although the courts go on vacation quite often, the counsel has to work all the time. Ease in life is a thing that counts.
Recently there was a television show in England. A Labour member of Parliament was put on against one of the big tycoons of industry. In the end, the question turned on how much each was getting. The Labour member of Parliament indicated his salary. He had some outside occupation and he gave that, too. He then asked the big industrialist what he was getting. He received a very evasive reply. He said he was paying 19/- in the £ income tax but he did not give any sum that he was paid. He was pursued further. The question was put to him as to how much he took home weekly as opposed to the Labour Member of Parliament. There was quite a controversy on that matter as far as television and radio were concerned.
One of the English newspapers took up the point afterwards. They said they thought it was quite a proper question to ask. They asked if anybody refused a rise in salary because it went from 17/- in the £ to 19/-in the £ in income tax. This Sunday newspaper went on to say that for a judge or a Prime Minister the salary must be realistic. It was pointed out that one must also consider how many people would accept the post of a Prime Minister or a judge in England at a cut price rate because there were incentives other than money—power, importance in the public eye and forced adulation. I do not know whether these things count with those who go on the Bench in this country.
It is an honourable ambition to get on the Bench. I am quite sure that ease in life, the fact that a person is not driven morning and night at his work, does count and makes many a man take for a judgeship a sum much below what he was earning at the Bar.
I can see no argument whatever at present for paying a Chief Justice in this country £6,000 per annum when to that is added the fact that, after serving for, say, 15 or 20 years he can go out with a pension of £4,000. That is completely iniquitous in this country and it is particularly so when one knows of the recent Budget matter. The service pensioners of the State will get, from next August, only one-quarter of what it is agreed they should get, if their pension were paid in good money instead of bad money. When we come to the social pensioners, the old age pensioners, and so on, we are told they are sharing in the national prosperity and in that way it is measured at 2/6 a week starting from next August. Under these circumstances, to put a person on a level of £6,000 per annum with a pension of £4,000 per annum after a certain number of years' service is completely out of proportion. I do not know what has inspired the bringing in of such legislation.
I shall mention one other argument used on Second Reading because I want to put it aside. It was said that if we did not pay these people enough, they might become corrupt. That was denied but there was the quotation by Deputy Corish from what the Taoiseach said on the Courts of Justice Bill, 1959.
I did not use that argument.
Maybe the Minister did not. Maybe he is wary enough not to do it. However, it is the whole background.
No, I refuted that.
Has the situation changed between 1959 and now? The Taoiseach said in 1959——
Do not attribute arguments to me which I did not make.
It was made by certain people—Deputy Sherwin, for instance.
With some people, it is possible.
It was also said that people would be scrounging on them, and so on. That was said by one of your supporters.
Have judges not been sacked from their jobs?
I do not know of any judge—not in this country—who was sacked.
Except one—a justice.
Yes, but that had nothing to do with money. I want to read what the Taoiseach said in October, 1959, as reported at column 561 of the Official Report:
Independence in the sense that we use that term in relation to judge means something more than freedom from improper Government influence. It means putting them into a position in which they will be, as far as possible, immune from improper influence of any kind, and it is no exaggeration to say, in my view, that an adequate and, indeed, a generous basis of remuneration for judges is the basis of their independence.
Later, at the same column, the Taoiseach is reported as saying:
... we have in our judges people who are immune from improper influences of any kind, ...
The Minister made exactly the same statement on the Second Reading on 28th March, 1962.
I did not.
I have it here—does the Minister want me to read it for him?
Order! Deputy McGilligan.
We have plenty of time to go on with all this.
What is the point in going back to the debate before this one? Why not stick to this debate? I do not want to go back to 1924.
It is the same group of judges and the standard is the same. I have been talking about the debate which took place in 1959.
A moment ago, the Deputy refused to consider what was done in 1924.
I am talking about 1959, not 1924. At the same column, the Taoiseach is reported as saying:
I know it may be said that you cannot buy integrity but we, and perhaps even more important the people, must have absolute confidence that the judges cannot be subjected to improper influence of any kind.
Later, as reported at column 564, he said:
...; we think that the salaries of judges here should be related to the higher rates of remuneration prevailing in other branches of the public service and the income which a practitioner of the law in good standing could hope to earn at the Bar.
I consider it a most degrading type of argument to say that judges might fall by the temptation of improper influence.
No, but an odd one could.
We have been saved from that so far. In any event, I suggest that it is completely wrong to build a whole scheme of salaries and pensions for judges on the basis of an odd one who might go wrong.
That argument was not put forward by me in this debate in favour of these salaries.
Politicians go wrong and they become judges.
But some of them never did—and that is the trouble. If there had been a bit of a slip-up, there would be none of this today.
What about this statement by the Minister: "We value our judiciary, their independence and integrity. Let us make up our minds that, if we want to keep them that way, we must pay them."
I specifically repudiated that argument.
I shall read it out for the Minister.
I have that marked, too.
Progress reported; Committee to sit again.
The Dáil adjourned at 5 p.m until 3 p.m. on Tuesday 15th May, 1962.