I should like to follow up on a previous speaker who referred to jury service. At present a very limited number of people is obliged to give this service and I think far too many are exempt from it. The original idea, I suppose, was that people with high technical qualifications would not rank as being ordinary men in the street and as being ideal jurors. It was felt that they might be unduly confused by their own technical problems and could not give as clear a decision on purely matters of fact. In my view that is entirely outdated. We live in a highly technical age and it is very hard to get anyone who is not technically qualified in some way. I see no reason why, for instance, a civil engineer should be regarded as any less suitable for jury service than a plumber or a carpenter or any other tradesman. At the same time, I agree with the previous speaker who stated that it is a tremendous burden on a man living on a small wage, or self-employed, to have to give a fair amount of time to jury service for a very nominal fee, if anything.
If we are going to continue jury service at all, I think we shall have to be far more realistic and pay a reasonable fee to jurors for travel and attendance. That would have to cover days on which they were called to be jurors-in-waiting as well as the days on which they are actually engaged on a jury. The number of cases referred to juries at the moment is, I think, too big and it will be well for the Minister to keep this in mind when considering this matter, as he has said he is doing, under expert advice. I object very strongly to cases of damages in road accidents being referred to a jury. It is right that jurors should be called on to decide the facts of the case and to give impartial verdicts as to where the main responsibility for a road accident really lies but when it comes to the issue of damages for injury, I think the jurors are the least capable of giving a fair assessment.
It is common knowledge that what very often happens in such cases is that the foreman of the jury tries to get some agreement on a figure for damages once liability has been decided. It is very rare that unanimity, or anything like it, is reached in the early stages and the jurors are then usually asked by the foreman to write down the figure which each one has in mind. I know from those who have been on such juries that the figures very to quite a fantastic extent. One juror will be in favour of £10,000; another juror will be in favour, perhaps, of £50. It is not at all unusual to have that wide discrepancy and that is because we are all, as private individuals, prejudiced to some extent. We are either prejudiced as motorists, as cyclists or as pedestrians and it is very hard to get that out of our mind. If you are a pedestrian and the injured party is a pedestrian it is very hard not to say: "It is time we gave the motorists something to think about and I shall award £10,000 damages. That will keep them quiet for a bit."
If the juror is a motorist, he may feel prejudiced because he believes pedestrians are far too apt to wander thoughtlessly into the roadway and to think it is about time they got some warning by the award of purely nominal damages when they suffer injury in such cases. The assessment of damages in these cases is really more a matter for an actuary who is able to assess what the immediate damage has been and also the possible loss of income in the future. I should hope that while jurors may be retained to decide purely matters of fact, the calculation of damages should be left to experts who could advise the judge in the matter. I should hope, therefore, that in this review of the jury service generally, we would be able to spread the load much more widely over the whole community and make many more people liable for jury service than are liable at present. I hope we shall restrict the number of cases referred to juries and I also hope that when a man is called for jury service he will be adequately paid, whether he is called on to serve or not, for his loss of time and his travelling.
In regard to free legal aid, I was rather disappointed by one quotation by the Minister from a speech by his predecessor. This gives me some cause for anxiety. I fear I have not got the exact quotation before me but there was an indication that free legal aid would not be readily granted to people who appeared to be making crime a career. From the ordinary commonsense point of view, I can see that seems reasonable but we must never forget that any accused person comes before the court as an innocent person until proved guilty. The fact that a man may have a long record of previous convictions must not allow anyone to conclude that he is guilty in a particular case. A previous criminal career should not in itself be any obstacle to the granting of free legal aid if the case is one of sufficient complexity to warrant it.
In his speech yesterday, Deputy Ryan made some reference to differences in the handling of cases of motoring offences. He appeared to give the impression that he felt that while people who broke into and entered premises were real criminals, motorists who were found guilty of dangerous driving were in a different class altogether. I deny that absolutely. I feel that people who are guilty of dangerous driving are criminals in the very worst sense. The sooner we get this across to them, the better. No one has a right to take a car out on the road and drive it in a dangerous manner any more than he has a right to go around with a loaded gun. A motorcar is no less a lethal weapon than a loaded gun and it can be far more dangerous. With a loaded gun, you can kill only one person. With a speeding car you can kill many.
Anyone who, out of sheer selfishness or impatience or even bad manners, endangers the life or safety of his fellow man should be very severely punished without any mercy whatsoever. If we tinker with this problem, we are going to encourage young irresponsible people with more money than sense to drive to the public danger. It is only by making it perfectly clear that these people are worse criminals than those guilty of burglary or anything else that we will grapple with the problem.
So far as the Garda are concerned, I have the greatest respect for the force and I think they are operating with amazing efficiency. It is a very smooth running machine. Its record of crime detection is excellent. I had a case only recently when one of my sons lost a bicycle. The bicycle was stolen. It was recovered by the Garda within 24 hours, many miles away. Granted, my young lad had the sense to memorise the number of his bicycle. He was able to give the number immediately at the Garda station to which he reported the loss, and that was a help. I only wish, and I think the Garda also wish, that other cyclists would co-operate in the same way. To find a stolen bicycle within 24 hours about six or seven miles away from the place where it was stolen was quite an achievement. I was amazed to find that the Garda did not regard this as anything unusual; they regarded it as purely routine.
I hope everyone will give the Garda their absolute, unqualified and full support in a very difficult job which they are doing extremely well but I feel that in some cases they are being discouraged by what they deem to be a lack of support from the district justices. I have got this complaint on too many occasions to be able to dismiss it as being irresponsible. I know that we have provided in legislation that there shall be regular meetings of district justices in order to try to achieve a higher degree of standardisation of penalties. I hope the district justices will also be encouraged in every way to give more support to the Garda than they are doing at present. Certainly, in the public mind, quite apart from the Gardaí themselves, there is an impression that district justices are being far too lenient and that fairly serious cases are being dealt with under the Probation Act or by means of the imposition of very small fines. I am not in favour of undue severity but I feel there has got to be greater severity on the part of district justices than is being experienced at the moment and if this is not forthcoming there will be a tremendous temptation to the Garda not to pursue their inquiries with as much enthusiasm as they display at present. They must be assured that when they bring a person before the courts and when that person is convicted he or she will be properly punished and the forces of law will thereby be strengthened.
I should like, in conclusion, to convey my good wishes to the Minister as he starts his new term of office. He has got off to a very good start. I wish him the best of good luck, particularly in the furthering of the programme of law reform which is already in progress. There is much to be done still. While we do not want to move with undue haste, I know we can rely on him to press on with this programme to the best of his very considerable ability.