Skip to main content
Normal View

Dáil Éireann debate -
Tuesday, 4 Nov 2003

Vol. 573 No. 3

Courts and Court Officers (Amendment) Bill 2003: Second Stage.

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

As the House will be aware, the maximum number of ordinary judges of the High Court is prescribed by law. Currently, the Courts and Court Officers Act 2002 provides that the number shall not be more than 26. When I refer to ordinary judges of the High Court, I refer to the judges of the High Court other than the President of the High Court. The number of ordinary judges of the High Court can be increased by one when, as currently, the President of the Law Reform Commission is a judge of the High Court. The Bill before the House today provides that the maximum number of ordinary judges can be increased by two to 28.

I am aware that the legislative cap on the maximum number of judges provides for little flexibility in judicial assignments and resources generally. If the Government of the day wishes to appoint an additional judge to any court, primary legislation must be enacted. This is a rather cumbersome way of proceeding and there is merit in examining whether there is a more expeditious way of making provision for additional judges while ensuring that the Executive is fully account able to the Oireachtas in such matters. This matter is being examined in my Department.

I appreciate that any reference to judicial resources raises in some minds the issue of delays in the courts. The establishment of the Courts Service as an independent agency in 1999 represented the most radical reorganisation of court services in Ireland since the foundation of the State. The mission statement of the agency is: "To manage the courts, support the Judiciary and provide a high-quality and professional service to all the courts." As Minister, I am responsible for ensuring that the service is adequately funded. In 2003, €92.179 million has been provided for the Courts Service, which represents a 5.6% increase compared to 2002. This does not include judges' salaries, which are payable out of the Central Fund. This funding allows the Courts Service to advance the implementation of its strategic plans and policies, specifically in the areas of information technology and capital building programmes. I am confident that the level of funding provided to the Courts Service is adequate to maintain existing levels of service.

The courts' strategic service plan is designed to provide a framework within which the courts can provide an efficient, speedy and user-friendly service for people seeking a legal remedy. The service places particular emphasis on the implementation of an IT strategy to meet the operational requirements of all offices and facilitate the provision of a high-quality service to all who use the courts. The service actively assists the Judiciary in all initiatives undertaken on judicial case management. The implementation of judicial practice directions aimed at reducing waiting times in the non-jury and judicial review list in the High Court, which enables parties who are ready and willing to go to trial to obtain a speedy hearing, is a good example. Major efforts have been made by the service in conjunction with the Judiciary to reduce waiting times in criminal and family law matters. Extra criminal courts have been held and waiting times reduced.

The Government has provided significant additional resources for the Judiciary and the number of judges attached to the District Court, the Circuit Court, the High Court and the Supreme Court has been increased in recent years. Seven additional judges were appointed under the provisions of the Courts and Court Officers Act 2002 – two High Court judges, three Circuit Court judges and two District Court judges. The provision of these additional resources has assisted in the objective of reducing delays generally.

There is nothing contentious in the Bill. It is simply to enable the number of judges to be increased by two. As I have indicated, the current legislative method of increasing the number of judges is cumbersome. There may be a more expeditious way of doing so without losing any accountability and I will consider the matter further. I commend this Bill to the House.

I agree with the Minister that there is nothing terribly contentious in this Bill and for that reason we will not be opposing it. The purpose of the Bill is to make an amendment to the existing legislation to allow the Government to appoint two more High Court judges. However, the need for the legislation arises because of the Government's mishandling of the Laffoy commission. I remind the House that Ms Justice Laffoy was so badly treated that she felt she had no option but to resign. If this were an ordinary employment relationship I have no doubt that a case for constructive dismissal could be brought against the State. This created a crisis which was of the Government's own making.

The Government has now engaged Seán Ryan, senior counsel, to do this job. This legislation will enable it to appoint him as a High Court judge. Why is an additional office being created here? There is clearly a need to appoint Mr. Ryan, but what does the Government have in mind for the second post? If the Minister will answer that question, Fine Gael will not oppose the legislation.

The Labour Party will not be opposing the legislation either. Normally we would not be expected to accede to the passage of Bill in two days without a battle, but we will not have a fight this time.

This is a short Bill with a specific function. It is a strange amendment Bill because its only function is to cap further the number of High Court judges: there is to be a maximum not of 26 but of 28 judges. It is unusual for legislation not to contain a minimum and a maximum. Perhaps the flaw is that there is no flexibility. We will have to deal with this in the House again when it is found that 28 High Court judges are not sufficient because a few more inquiries or tribunals are taking place. It would have been better to make the amendment somewhat more generous in terms of the number of judges – rather than saying two, we could say five, for example. As Deputy Deasy pointed out, one of the two new judges has already been identified, but we do not know who the other one is. Perhaps the Minister could inform us whom he has in mind. A better approach could be found than to state that there is to be a maximum of 28 judges. The Minister for Finance probably believes that if he allows any flexibility, the vacuum created will be filled by the number of judges allowed, but we could take a more responsible approach.

The problem of the number of High Court judges has been aggravated by the number of tribunals, even though they are presided over largely by retired judges, as in the Barron tribunal, the Barr tribunal and the Morris tribunal. However, there is also the Moriarty tribunal, and there are High Court judges on the Law Reform Commission, the Constituency Commission and the Standards in Public Office Commission. Now we are to replace Ms Justice Laffoy on the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse and a Circuit Court judge, Judge Mahon, is to succeed Mr. Justice Flood. We can see that five or six judges already have designated functions outside the High Court and I presume that one or two judges are regularly unable to sit in court through illness or some other reason. I would be interested to know the number of judges sitting at any given time, in a similar statistic to that of the number of prisoners in our prison system on a certain day. We would then know whether we had three quarters or two thirds of the complement of judges sitting on the Bench. We may be faced with the need to make further appointments. The Barron committee investigating the Monaghan and Dublin bombings recommended that there would be an inquiry. The Nally committee investigating the Omagh bombing proposes an inquiry also. We are given to understand also that the Cory reports on collusion in various areas could be proposing inquiries. The situation could deteriorate, therefore, and this simple amendment to provide for two High Court judges may need to be amended again before too long if we continue down that road.

We should consider the new development in recent years of tribunals and whether judges should sit on them. Can we consider the possibility of appointing senior counsel as chairpersons of tribunals which would mean that judges would not have to be taken off the Bench? The Minister spoke about alternative means and a commission of investigations into various matters dealt with by tribunals in the future. It appears that is the way forward. The Committee of Public Accounts did a tremendous job in a very short period – five weeks – in getting in approximately €500 million for the Exchequer, making a recommendation that future work would be done along these lines, that there would be a parliamentary investigator and that much more work would be done either through the Dáil committees or a special Dáil committee of investigations, petitions and so on which would be established. I understand the Law Reform Commission, in its discussion document on inquiries, makes similar recommendations on a dedicated Dáil commission of inquiry.

Much of the work we currently hive off to the chairmanship of High Court judges in tribunals could be done in-house much more cheaply, although many of the committees are going on for a long time, and it would have the added benefit of giving an extra relevance to the House. We have had much criticism about the House not being seen to be doing the work the public believes we have been elected to do. This would appear to be a relevant function of the House and no other activity of the House, certainly in my time as a Member, has ever received such public acclaim as the work of the Committee of Public Accounts. I advise the Minister to go down the road he has been proposing and perhaps consider some of the proposals the Labour Party has put forward in the Dáil reform, parliamentary oversight and Government accountability draft docu ment it has published to see whether we can do something about dealing with the tribunals.

The Minister is full of bipartisanship today. The Deputy should take him up on that.

I am sure he will have the opportunity of having a go at Deputy Deasy again.

The Deputy is distracting me.

We will not be objecting to the legislation but I thought the Minister might accept an amendment to provide greater flexibility which would make provision for further appointments without the need to introduce additional amending legislation in this House.

Sinn Féin will not be opposing the Bill. Like the other Deputies, I find it strange that we are limiting the appointments to 28. Could we not provide for 36, 50 or whatever? That would mean that it would be no more than that number, not that it has to be the number included in the legislation.

It is unfortunate that the Bill is so short because the opportunity exists, since we are dealing with the courts system, to extend it. The Minister is planning to introduce other legislation and as he has people in the Department examining aspects of the courts system, we would have had an opportunity today and tomorrow to deal with changes which are required in the courts. If we increase the number of High Court judges to 28, where will they sit in the Four Courts? I recently had to attend a trial, not a High Court trial, in which the jury could not hear what was being said by the witnesses. They had a small room in which to gather. If that is happening at that level, and bearing in mind the chaotic scenes in and around the courts where different courts are trying to operate, we need to accelerate the programme of modernisation which has taken place. Excellent work has taken place and some of the courts are a credit to the courts system but others are an absolute disgrace. If we are appointing judges we have to provide the facilities for them to make their judgments or at least hear the evidence being given in the courts.

I hope to have an opportunity at some stage to deal with the many changes required in the courts system but on this issue I ask that the Minister accept an amendment tomorrow on Report Stage to expand the legislation so that we do not have to change it every year if additional judges are required, especially as we appear to be going down the route of more injunctions. We recently had the scandalous abuse of the High Court by the county councils and the city council in getting injunctions against peaceful protesters. The High Court should not be used in that fashion. I am not casting aspersions on the judges. They dealt with the cases before them but more big businesses, the rich in our society and in this case the councils, are using the courts to injunct protests, whether they be trade union protests or, as in recent incidents, peaceful protests against a double tax. Regardless of whether we agree with that, the court is not the place to solve those issues. If we go down that road, we will need more than 28 High Court judges and many more buildings.

Will the Minister give consideration to moving the High Court to the regions on occasion, similar to the other courts which have moved? That would be a welcome step and would make it easier for some of the court cases to be dealt with quickly rather than have everybody involved travel to Dublin.

I welcome the support from across the House on this issue. I fully accept the point that has been made that people would query why we are bringing a technical Bill of this nature before the House. There are a number of reasons. First, the number of judges has to be determined by law. Second, if we simply said there should be up to 100 judges, it would allow the Government of the day to appoint people to the High Court more or less at will and to be a drain on the central fund. I imagine the current practice of providing a cap, to put that term on it, is probably driven by the concerns of the Department of Finance to make sure it is not easy to simply hand out jobs in the High Court by a Government decision taken one afternoon at Cabinet or whatever and that there is a natural desire to preserve the central fund from excessive appointments. As I said in my earlier contribution, however, the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform is contemplating introducing a more flexible arrangement. I do not know whether we will get it past the Department of Finance, but that is our intention.

It would not be appropriate for me to pre-empt what the Government intends to do by way of appointments.

Question put and agreed to.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

When is it proposed to take the next Stage?

Tomorrow, with the agreement of the House.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Is that agreed? Agreed.

Committee Stage ordered for Wednesday, 5 November 2003.
Top
Share