Three years ago, in February 1994, I raised my concerns with the then Minister for Justice at the apparent abuse of her ministerial power about the overuse of the petition system. At that time there was growing public and judicial concern that the justice system was being undermined by the excessive use of the power to reduce fines and sentences under section 23 of the Criminal Justice Act. I pointed out that, in the previous two year period, as many as 8,500 petitions had succeeded. It was clear that the constitutional and statutory power of the Minister for Justice to remit sentences and penalties had developed in a most unhealthy fashion. What was intended as a measure to be used sparingly was now routine, and fines and penalties were being routinely set aside or reduced, often without the normal appeals procedure to a higher court being exhausted. The penalties handed down by our courts, including imprisonment, were being reduced or set aside in an unaccountable fashion and with no consultation with the court that imposed the penalty in the first place.
I argued then for a curbing of the routine administrative unravelling of court orders. The then Minister was unrepentant and it was only after a retired District Court judge challenged the manner of the exercise of the Minister's powers in the High Court that in April 1995 the High Court ruled that this parallel system of justice should be operated in the way intended under the Act, that is, sparingly. The present Minister did not appeal this decision. One month later, on 11 May, when I asked her what new procedures she would introduce to comply with the judgement of the court, she stated that she was having the matter considered and had commenced an examination of the practicalities involved. What has happened in the meantime?
I read last week, two years later, that a District Court judge accused the present Minister for Justice of interfering with the courts in the manner in which she dealt with a petition which had come from her Fine Gael colleague, Deputy Theresa Ahearn. The story goes back to a court order of 27 July 1992 where a three month term of imprisonment had not been executed and had lapsed during a lengthy petition process, and four and a half years later was before the judge for renewal. This was a sentence which had been upheld on appeal and had been refused an earlier petition to the previous Minister, but with the change of Government it arrived on the current Minister's desk for repetition. The Minister, in turn, wrote to her Fine Gael colleague saying that she was making further inquiries and added: "This acknowledgement may be produced to the Garda as confirmation that the above sentence is under repetition." That letter was dated 10 April 1995. A copy of it was passed to the local station in Ardfinnan. It transpired that the Minister's letter had the effect of putting a stay on the order. Committal orders are meant to be different from fines. They are court commands, not open to the discretion of gardaí to execute or not to execute.
Since the High Court decision in 1995, the volume of petitions finalised has reduced by all accounts, and that is how it should be. However, my concern is that because no action was taken to formalise the petition system to comply with the 1995 High Court decision, a halfway house has developed. Petitions continue to come in. A letter is sent from the Minister to the petitioner saying the matter is being considered and pointing out that the letter may be provided to the Garda as proof that the matter is under petition. By this method or ruse many warrants are going out of date and I am told judges are threatening not to renew them. Will the Minister indicate what legal ground there is for saying that the filing of a petition postpones a warrant? How many warrants have gone out of date while in this limbo land under petition?
In a Dáil reply of 22 January it was stated that in 1996 a total of 295 petitions were finalised and there were just over 5,000 petitions on hand. The reply went on to say that statistics in relation to cases where warrants were executed while a petition result was pending were not kept. Neither, I assume, will figures be kept of the number of warrants that have gone out of date or lapsed while under petition. Will the Minister confirm that many warrants have lapsed because a ministerial letter is now being used as a ruse to delay the execution of warrants in the hope that it will not be renewed when lapsed? Will she confirm that her practice of writing to a petitioner stating that her letter may be produced to the Garda with the effect that it will not execute the warrant, in other words, putting a practical stay on the execution of a warrant, is a circumvention of the High Court judgment in the Geoghegan case of April 1995? How can it be that almost two years after a High Court judge ordered that this parallel system of justice by way of the petition system had to be used sparingly, and nearly two years after the Minister's promise that she was having the whole matter considered, she has still not come forward with a proper regulatory position on the matter of petitions?
The President of the District Court said, and I agree with him, that a lack of action on these orders dilutes the power of judges and damages their standing. Sentences and penalties are being modified and set aside by delay and default by the petition system, as it is currently operating under this Minister. The Ardfinnan case is a shabby example of where the order of the court was clearly undermined by a combination of politics and sluggish administration.
How many orders are lying unnoticed in Garda stations, unexecuted, paralysed by a letter of acknowledgement from the Minister for Justice, out of date and possibly unrenewable? Why has it taken the Minister so long to bring about the changes required by the High Court decision in April 1995? Is it not dishonest of politicians to criticise judges for inadequate sentences while at the same time retaining a method of privately setting aside sentences and penalties handed down in public by an independent Judiciary?
