I should like to know, under this section, whether the salaries specified also apply to temporary appointments in the various posts.
Courts (Supplemental Provisions) (Amendment) Bill, 1962 (Certified Money Bill) —Committee Stage (Resumed).
Question again proposed: "That Section 1 stand part of the Bill."
Yes, but there are no temporary appointments now. It is not intended that there should be, again, if at all possible.
Are there not temporary appointments as district justices?
No.
At the moment?
No. There are movable justices but no temporary appointments.
I should like to suggest that the fewer temporary appointments the better if we are to have anything approaching justice in this country.
I want to repeat that there are no temporary appointments at the moment at all and it is not contemplated that there should be.
I had a recommendation down in relation to subparagraph (c) of subsection 3, which I withdrew. That was readily understandable, being in the position of not being able to put down an amendment to a Bill of this kind that would not involve an increased charge on the Exchequer. But, on the section itself, I want to say that I see no reason why there should be a distinction between the remuneration of the ordinary justices of the Dublin and Cork district courts and the rural justices in the rest of Ireland. If there were any real basis for it, there should be a similar distinction between the regular circuit court judges in Dublin and the judges in the rest of the country.
I think that, in other aspects of legislation, uniformity appears to be a thing that is dear to the heart of everybody. Uniformity here would certainly rid this Bill of one of its few real anomalies.
I take it that any remarks that are to be made on Section 1 must be made now. As I previously stated, I think it inopportune to increase the salaries of the judges of the higher courts at this stage. It is setting a bad example to the rest of the country in general. The very specific salary increases, from that of the Chief Justice down, would seem to suggest that there is a lot of prosperity in the country and that there are adequate funds to remunerate everyone in the country on a generous basis. We know that that is not the case.
It has been stated here by the Minister that this is only bringing the judges into line with the eighth round of salary increases. I venture to suggest to the Minister and to the Government that this Bill will be interpreted by the country not as a conclusion of the eighth round of wage and salary increases but as a signal for the commencement of the ninth round. I think that is the way it has been interpreted in the country at the present time.
The Minister also said, at some stage, that it is necessary to preserve the differential between various people and the judges. I do not think that is necessary at all. At the beginning of this century it was accepted that the lower classes were not entitled to a fair crack of the whip, that anything was good enough for them, and if we are determined to preserve that differential we are still proceeding on the basis that there should be a vast difference between one section of this community and the other, in other words that there should be the very rich and the very poor. I do not subscribe to that view and I do not think the country would accept it.
Those are my views on the proposal to increase the salaries of judges of the supreme court, the high court and, indeed, the circuit court but, like Senator Lindsay, I cannot see at all why there should be any difference between the salaries paid to metropolitan district justices and to provincial or rural district justices. No court in the country administers justice to the satisfaction of the masses of the people more than the district court and while I might be a tiny bit out of order, I would like to suggest that it is high time the jurisdiction of the district court was considerably increased. In that way justice would be administered expeditiously and at a price which average people in the country could afford. By and large, the district court has given great satisfaction and I venture to suggest that its jurisdiction should be increased to about £300. When the courts were first introduced the district court jurisdiction on contract was £25 and now in 1962 its jurisdiction has gone up only to £50.
The Minister based his arguments for these very substantial increases to the higher category of judges as follows: "I am still basing the whole proposal on the simple proposition of fair play for all sections." He also appealed to us time and time again to compare like with like. I put it to the House that if he wants to compare like with like he must compare the work done by metropolitan district justices with that done by rural district justices. The metropolitan district justice works from 10.30 I think until 4 p.m. He is situated a short distance from his court. He is dealing with a specialised aspect of justice because either the civil side is allotted to him or the criminal side or, perhaps, the children's court. The rural district justice's courts commence at 11 in the morning and very often he has to travel from Dublin. It may be said that there is no obligation on him to live in Dublin but even if he does live in his district, as most do, he has to travel maybe 30 miles. The courts go on often until five or six in the evening.
I will deal with district No. 5 because it is my own district with which I am well acquainted. The justice who presides over district No. 5 is responsible for the entire County of Cavan, about one-third to a half of Monaghan, a considerable portion of Leitrim and a considerable portion of Meath. He is not alone responsible for the administration of civil and criminal justice in the district courts in that big area but is responsible also for the administration of the courts. In Dublin the ordinary district justice has no liability for that administration as the president of the district court looks after that. The district justice in the country is responsible for civil and for a very varied type of criminal jurisdiction and you do not have that in the city. Furthermore, it has been put forward here as an argument that the cost of living is higher in the city but I say that, by and large, the cost of living is higher in the country. The cost of education is much higher in the country. The district justice in the city has a varied selection of schools for his family and when they come to the university stage he has the university beside him, whereas the district justice in the country has the added expense of providing university education for his family if he lives in his district as most of them do.
As you have this difference between the rural and the metropolitan district justice the Minister or the Executive can promote a justice within his own category. By changing him from the country to the city you can increase his salary. If, as Senator Lindsay said, there are any grounds at all for this differential you should have it in the circuit court. Why have it in the district court and not in the circuit court? The circuit court judge who presides in the city of Dublin has the same remuneration as the circuit judge in Kerry, in Cavan or in Donegal.
It is an extraordinary thing, which may not be appreciated, that, when these increases come into force, the district justice, who is responsible for Cavan, most of Leitrim and a good bit of Monaghan and Meath, will have £155 a year less than the law agent for County Cavan, the county medical officer of health for County Cavan and the county engineer for County Cavan. It is a case of comparing like with like except that the district justice has much more responsibility and much more work to do than any of these three individuals yet he is to be paid £155 a year less. That is not fair play. If the Minister is to compare like with like he must pay the rural district justice the same as the metropolitan district justice and if he is to apply the test of fair play, surely he should remunerate the rural district justice on the same level as the county solicitor, the county engineer or the county medical officer of health? It is really impossible to understand why the difference is being brought in. I know the Minister has said that the reason is that the Select Committee which was set up in 1953 brought in this differential.
No.
Or approved of that differential. Whether they introduced it or approved of it, I say they were wrong. The Minister, when introducing this Bill, did not see fit to follow the procedure of 1953 and set up a Select Committee. He did that on the basis I think that Labour would not participate in it and that it was not necessary, but he cannot have it both ways. He cannot say it is not necessary to set up a Select Committee to determine the justices' salaries but because that Select Committee decided on certain things or approved certain things in 1953 that he must follow them now. I say this is all part of an idea that the man doing the work in the country is not doing as useful work as the man in the city. It is all part of a very undesirable and unhealthy trend that anything is good enough for the country but the people in the city must be regarded as being more important and must be more highly remunerated and be looked up to.
I think all Ministers for Justice have been city men for some years back and it is generally believed, now that the head of the Government and some important Ministers are city men, that rural Ireland cannot hope to get a fair crack of the whip. That is very undesirable and very unhealthy and I would ask the Minister even at this eleventh hour to reconsider the matter and remunerate the rural district justices at the same rate as their city colleagues.
I want to support the case made against differentials between town and country. Those differentials are creeping in in many places. We have them in this Bill and we have them in the university and elsewhere. It is part of the system which lays down that the only place to live in is the great big capital city and that any other place is substandard and anybody living in rural Ireland should have his eyes fixed on the capital to get there. That is very wrong. The district justices were mentioned. The district courts operate all over the country. Many of them certainly are not in university towns and, consequently, when it comes to the expense of educating a family it costs them considerably more than it costs the justices who are based in university centres, yet there is no cognisance taken of that. Therefore, it seems as if the district justices should be aiming to work their way up the ladder and finally arrive at the golden gates upon which they knock and come into Dublin. That is very wrong.
The Senator is not forgetting that this also applies to Cork City?
Cork has been put on the same level as Dublin and we are thankful for small mercies.
The golden gates are there, too.
Dublin is preferred on occasion.
I want to take up a point raised by Senator Fitzpatrick who said that the level for district justices is too low and that it should be on the same rate as that for the county medical officer of health or the county engineer. I could not agree with that for one moment or that you could contrast the responsibility of the county engineer with the responsibility of the district justices for the 10 to 4 no decision type of work. On the other hand, we are fond of looking at the scales as they were in past years. We find in past years, and quite rightly so, that the county engineer was the most important man in the county, the man who had responsibility for spending large sums of money but yet being constantly denigrated and being pushed down the scale. We find it is part of the same scheme which pushes down the technical man on the basis that he cannot discharge his functions unless he is supervised by somebody who knows nothing about the technical——
The Senator is now going outside the scope of the section.
I suggest the Minister would have done well to have accepted the reasonable amendment proposed on the last day in order to remove any shadow of doubt that there was any ulterior motive in bringing in this Bill.
I should just like to say a few words as I happened to be a Minister for Justice. Although I am a Dublin man, I know the country as well as anybody else. I should like to remind Senator Fitzpatrick, who is a young man and, perhaps, is not aware that, when the courts were first set up in Dublin, there were what were called assistant justices who were paid less than the ordinary justices. There were four permanent assistant justices in Dublin. We did away with that in Dublin. The Senator suggested that Fianna Fáil were responsible for this differential but, as a matter of fact, in the first courts—we were not in the Dáil at all—the differential was there. I could never understand why there were assistant justices. They were doing exactly the same work as the ordinary justices. The Minister might not know that either as he is also a young man but his advisers would.
So far as Dublin is concerned I was responsible for the 1953 rise. I am quite satisfied that the Dublin district justice has far more work to do. He is engaged all the time, whereas I know very well, although I have not now got statistics, from my examination of that question that there were some country districts where there was no work at all and where the justices were living the lives of country gentlemen. Since then, of course, there was a reorganisation which was first started before I left office in 1948. When the lawyer Government came in they did not give effect to it and it had to wait until we came back to increase the district areas. I do not know what the work is like now but when we had a very large number of areas some had practically nothing to do.
At that time, there was no president of the circuit court. Later there was a reorganisation of the circuit court which enabled the president of the circuit court to require a judge who had not much to do in his own circuit to help in an area where there was a lot of work to do. That was not possible before, and a man in his own area, unless he volunteered, need not help another. Things, therefore, are not at all as bad as Senator Fitzpatrick seems to suggest. I am just saying this in order to put the record right.
I should like also to speak on this matter of the creation of a differential between country and city, and I would like to speak, through you, Sir, to the Minister in a most co-operative way. I think that there is a case here to be examined. I deplore that there should be the creation of a differential, because everybody knows that a person with the status of a district justice in a country area is under immense social pressures and has to live up to a certain standard. His responsibilities are not less than those of his colleagues in the city. It is a pity that Senators Quinlan and Boland did wander into the position of forming an opinion on this on the basis of the amount of work one had to do. One should not be remunerated on the amount that one should have to do in a matter of this kind particularly, because it is well known that the further up you go in any service the less you have to do. One should be paid for the responsibility that rests on the person, and responsibility does rest very strongly, indeed, upon the shoulders of the rural district justice because in his milieu he has to dispense justice fairly and equally and has a responsibility of arriving at a decision which is as great as that of his colleague in the city.
Senators are, in fact, suggesting that I should upset the status quo. Since 1924 when, as Senator Boland says, the courts were established, this differential has existed. It was thought then that there was a case for paying a metropolitan justice—and this did not apply to Dublin only, it referred to Cork as well—more than a provincial district justice. That differential was maintained from 1924 to 1953. In 1953 a Select Committee of the Dáil examined this matter very carefully and we must assume that it represented the practically unanimous feeling of the Dáil at that time when it decided that the basis put forward was the right one. The Committee reaffirmed and approved of the existing differential.
How can I be expected to upset that? When one comes to deal with any of these salary matters one has to have regard to existing differentials. All salary scales are worked out on a certain basis, and one causes all sorts of inequities and injustices if one starts upsetting without due cause existing differentials. If I were to accede to what Senators are asking, and bring the provincial district justices up to the level of the city justices, I would be giving them an increase of 24 per cent in their salaries. Are Senators prepared to accept that? If I am criticised for anything, it is that the remuneration I propose for justices and judges is too high. Now I am asked to accede to giving one class an increase of 24 per cent, for I do not think any Senator would suggest that the city justices should be brought down to the level of the provincial justices, and therefore, the only logical outcome of the suggestion is that the provincial justices should be brought up. That would do an injustice to people if you upset a long-established differential.
I am not certain in my own mind that if I were coming to this matter afresh I would not probably be of the opinion that a district justice should be paid the same no matter where he is. That is probably a very defensible argument. But I am not coming to it afresh. I am coming to give increases on an existing, well-established and often approved of basis, and the only safe and equitable thing I can do is to give increases proportionate right along the line. I do not think it is fair to ask me to upset this differential, because it would result in an increase of 24 per cent to one section
I thought that the Minister for Justice was being presented to us as a breath of fresh air in the Department of Justice.
Might I be permitted to withdraw, Sir, to answer some questions in the Dáil for a moment?
Certainly. Senator Fitzpatrick.
As I was saying, I thought that the Minister for Justice was being presented to the House and to the country as a breath of fresh air in the Department of Justice, and that his duty and his intention was to modernise that Department and bring law and procedure up to date. But in spite of that the Minister for Justice has just told us he believes that if he were approaching this question of the remuneration of district justices with a fresh mind he would, he believes, remunerate the rural district justice and the metropolitan district justice on the same basis. That is an extraordinary admission for the Minister to make. He says that he is tied by something that happened away back in 1924 although there have been many changes in the country and in the attitude of the Minister's Party to a lot of things since 1924. Since then Senator Boland has abolished the differential that existed between certain metropolitan district justices and certain other metropolitan justices, and since then we have had the appointment of a President of the circuit court to whom it is proposed to pay £400 more than any other judge of the circuit court. Those are changes that have come about since this differential was wrongly set up in 1924.
The whole trend in this country is that if people are not leaving the country altogether they are moving from rural Ireland towards the bigger cities. As Senator Quinlan has said, they can expect to be paid better in the cities. Even the publicans down the country are selling their public houses, coming up and buying public houses in the city. The whole trend is towards the city. That is not encouraging. It is an unhealthy and undesirable state of affairs in this predominantly agricultural country, and in a country where we are told that agriculture and the prosperity of rural Ireland is the backbone and the corner-stone of our entire economy. If that is the attitude of the Government, and if it is the attitude of the Minister for Justice, I say it is unsound. The Minister said in so many words— I will be fair—that while he does not agree with it, he is tied to it because it was introduced in 1924.
The Minister asked where would we get the money, or did we propose bringing down the justices in Dublin city. Most definitely, yes. Level out all the justices to an average salary in between because, after all, in this Bill the justices are getting a greater increase than any other section of the community. The higher civil servants got something like 12½ per cent, and most of the others took their pattern from that.
On the one hand, we were told that the remuneration of the judges is tied up with the remuneration of the higher civil servants. That was the first time that tie-up was ever advanced in either House of the Oireachtas. We are told there is a tie-up, that it is sacrosanct, and that we must have retrospection to 1st November, the date on which the higher civil servants got their increase. The higher civil servants got about 12½ per cent, and this Bill proposes a minimum increase of 16½ per cent and up to almost 20 per cent. Why then was there such a necessity to depart from uniformity when it suited?
A question was raised about the disparity in work between justices in the country compared with justices in the city. I would say that if there is a disparity in work that is excellent, because it gives those judges, who have leisure, time to review justice as it works in this country. It gives them an opportunity to study their cases, and, perhaps, contribute to the law records and make other contributions. Surely it would be a most valuable public service that there should be someone in the legal profession who would have time to do that? At the moment the universities are largely staffed with part-time legal staff. They have not the time nor the leisure to do the necessary research work into law. Consequently, it is well that someone should be able to do it.
Many inquiries and commissions are set up. If the Government are aware that an area is so law-abiding that justices are underworked, there is ample scope and opportunity for putting them on one of the various commissions where they can perform an excellent function, rather than pushing all those appointments on to the Senate of the Universities, or the governing bodies of the Universities or anywhere else, on to people who are already very much overloaded with public work.
I am in entire agreement with the creation of parity of remuneration between rural and city district justices, but I do not agree with Senator Quinlan that it should be done at the expense of the city justices. I would not agree either with the Minister when he said that bringing rural justices up to the level of the city justices would be objectionable. It has happened time after time, when an anomaly was observed in remuneration, that the people below were brought up to the higher levels.
A former Minister for Education is present who could testify to the effect that when the anomaly of the highly efficient rating was removed so far as teachers were concerned, 75 per cent of the teaching personnel were brought up to the level of those who had been rated "highly efficient", at considerable expense running into hundreds of thousands of pounds. It is not anything unique to bring people up to the level of the people at the top. I would not agree with the Minister that that is not feasible. It would be a very retrograde step to suggest that parity should be created at the expense of people who enjoy a certain level of remuneration at present.
Senator Quinlan has now become a wage-cutter.
Senator Quinlan's suggestion that the salaries should be levelled out does not of necessity mean that the salaries at present paid to city justices should be reduced.
That is what he meant.
No. They are getting a very substantial increase under the Bill, and obviously he intended that if money is so scarce that this fragment of £21,000 cannot be added, the proposed increases should be levelled out. They should get a lesser increase and the remainder should be given to the country district justices.
That is not what Senator Quinlan said.
Of course, it is.
Of course, it is.
Question put and agreed to.
Section 2 agreed to.
Title agreed to.
Bill reported without recommendation and received for final consideration.
Question proposed: "That the Bill do now pass."
In relation to the amendment put down by me in regard to the retrospective date, it has come to my knowledge from different sources that improper motives and prior knowledge of the said date were imputed by me to the retired Chief Justice in the course of my speech. I have re-read my speech and nowhere, either expressed or implied, is there any such imputation or any allegation that there was privity or any suggestion of corrupt bargaining, or collusion, between the person concerned and the Government. In one way, I regard this intervention as unnecessary, but lest the person concerned might take heed of any such wrongful interpretation put on my speech and be hurt in consequence I want to say that I do not believe there was any privity or any corrupt bargaining between the former Chief Justice and the Government.
Question put and agreed to.