I move that the Bill be read a Second Time. The objects of the Bill are chiefly four. Firstly it proposes to restate the jurisdiction of the Circuit and District Courts in civil matters in terms that will be more in keepingwith the present day value of money. Secondly, it provides for a rearrangement of Circuit Court circuits and District Court districts which is long overdue and which will permit of a reduction in the number of circuits and districts and eventually, as vacancies occur, in the number of Circuit Judges and District Justices. Thirdly, it authorises the appointment of an additional High Court judge which has become necessary on account of the congestion of business in the High Court. And, finally, it authorises the grant to judges and justices of the increased salaries recommended by the Select Committee on Judicial Remuneration and makes certain alterations in the law in relation to judicial pensions. Besides the main provisions, the Bill contains a few miscellaneous provisions about which I shall have something to say in due course.
I do not think I need say very much about the judges and justices' salaries. The Bill gives effect to the recommendation of the Select Committee that an increase of salary should be given to the judges of the Supreme and High Courts as well as to the circuit judges and district justices and authorities the grant of the specific increases that the committee recommended, namely the sum of £450 a year in the case of the district justices and the circuit judges and the sum of £250 a year in the case of the other judges. From the point of view of the judiciary the present Bill's provisions with respect to remuneration are a great improvement on the provisions of the previous Bill.
Circuit judges and district justices are to receive increases amounting respectively to £75 a year and £150 a year more than was originally proposed and the judges of the Supreme and High Court who would have got nothing under the previous Bill are now to receive an increase of £250 a year. It is the view of the Government that the increased salaries now to be granted are so much better than the salaries provided for in the previous Bill and are so liberal in themselves that it would not be fair to the taxpayer to ask the Dáil to authorise payment of the new salariesfrom an earlier date than the 1st April this year. It is, therefore, unable to accept the recommendation of the Select Committee with regard to retrospection.
As regards judicial pensions, it is proposed to change the law in two respects. As the law stands, a judge is entitled to retire in the full vigour of his physical and mental powers after 15 years' service irrespective of his age. This is obviously unfair to the taxpayer and the Bill provides that in future no judge shall be entitled to retire on pension until he has reached the age of 65 years unless his retirement has been brought about by ill-health and the same provision is to apply to justices. This is in accordance with the recommendation of the Select Committee. The second change proposed is that the qualifying period of service to entitle a justice to full pension should be reduced from 30 years to 20 years. The committee recommended a reduction to 15 years but the Government has felt unable to accept this part of the committee's recommendation as it is of opinion that the considerations which may be urged in favour of fixing the qualifying period at 15 years in the case of the judges who are normally appointed late in life, do not apply to the case of the district justices. As a corollary to the reduction in the qualifying period for pension it is being provided that a justice who ceases to hold office because of age or infirmity is to be entitled to a pension after five years' service instead of ten years as at present. The pension proposals of the Bill will not apply to existing judges at all but they will apply to existing justices, if they so elect.
Before leaving the question of remuneration and pensions I should mention the question of expenses. Section 5 of the Bill is to replace Section 77 of the Courts of Justice Act, 1936, which has been found to be defective and difficult of interpretation. It is not intended to alter the existing practice, a description of which may be found in the Select Committee's report, and the purpose of Section 5 is simply to provide a clear and unequivocal statutory authority for what has alwaysbeen the practice. The Government has given careful consideration to the recommendation of the Committee that Section 44 of the Courts of Justice Act, 1936, should be repealed and that the judges of the High Court on circuit should receive an allowance to cover the cost of hotel accommodation instead of being provided with lodgings which are very costly but has decided, in deference to views expressed by the Chief Justice and the President of the High Court on behalf of the judges, not to make any change in the law but to try, by agreement with the judges, to secure a more extensive use of hotels with a consequent saving to the Exchequer.
I come now to the proposals for a reorganisation of Circuit Court circuits and District Court districts. The aim of these proposals, as I have already said, is to bring about a more even distribution of the business of the courts which will permit of a reduction in the present number of circuits and districts and, eventually, a corresponding reduction in the number of circuit judges and district justices.
To deal with the Circuit Court first —when the courts were established in 1924 the number of circuits was fixed at eight. In 1936 this number was increased to nine by the grouping together of the Counties of Donegal and Sligo to form a separate additional circuit. The case for reverting to the original idea of having no more than eight circuits is simply this—that taken as a whole the volume of business arising, outside of the Dublin and Cork circuits, is insufficient to keep a complement of seven judges reasonably fully employed and that it is plainly extravagant to have seven judges handling a volume of business that six could dispose of, if the business were better distributed.
An analysis of the number of days upon which each of the seven judges in the circuits in question sat over a five-year period shows that the annual average of sitting days for all seven circuits was 738, which means that each of the judges sat, on the average, on only 105 days in the year. Of course, the average is a purely artificial figure, as some of the judges sat much morefrequently than this. But the fact remains that the present arrangement of circuits does not provide anything like an even distribution of work as between the different circuits. Thus, in one circuit the judge has had to sit on 160 days, on the average, over the five-year period while the average number of sitting days in each of five other circuits during the same period fell below 100 days, and in one case it was well below 100 days. And last year the sittings in four of the provincial circuits fell below 100.
The intention is to constitute the new circuits with all convenient speed as soon as the Bill is law. In so doing an effort will be made to suit the convenience of all concerned and there will be as little interference as possible with the existing circuits. It has been represented by the Bar Council that the interests of the circuit-going Bar who practise in different counties would be affected by the transfer of certain circuit towns which are now in one circuit, to another circuit. Thus, a barrister who is at present practising in two towns in the same circuit may find that, if one of these towns is transferred to another circuit, the times for the hearing of business in the two towns may clash. I do not know whether there is any way of completely overcoming this difficulty but, no doubt, the interests of the Bar will receive due consideration from the President of the Circuit Court, in consultation with the circuit judge concerned, when he is fixing the places at which and the dates on which sittings are to be held in a particular circuit.
In the case of the District Court, there is room for a substantial reduction in the number of districts and a rearrangement of districts is long overdue. As matters stand, some of the justices have comparatively little to do and the majority of what I may call the country justices are not fully employed. District Court sittings take place on fixed days and, normally, on these days only, except where the justice considers it necessary or desirable to hold a special court in addition to the normal fixtures. Thus, by looking at the list of fixtures it is possible,if due allowance is made for the holding of occasional special courts, to get a general idea of the number of days on which the justices have to sit in the several districts. What the list reveals is that the fixtures do not provide for the holding of sittings, on as many as ten days in the month, in some of the districts and that the average for the country outside Dublin is less than 14 days in the month. Needless to say some of the justices sit more often than this and I am informed that the justice who is assigned to Cork City actually sits every day in the week except Sunday. Nevertheless, it is plain that there are too many districts in relation to the volume of business, which is spread so thinly over some districts that it does not provide enough work to keep the justices assigned to these districts reasonably fully employed. A survey of the position that has been made by my Department suggests that it may be found possible to reduce the number of districts by as many as six or seven without imposing an unreasonable burden of work on any individual justice. It is not proposed to interfere with the Dublin Metropolitan District.
In the case of both the Circuit Court and the District Court the rearrangement of circuits and districts will necessitate the cancellation of the existing assignments of judges and justices to their present circuits and districts and their reassignment to the smaller number of circuits and districts proposed to be created under the provisions of the Bill. Inevitably, one of the circuit judges will lose his circuit and at least five of the justices who are at present permanently assigned to particular districts will find themselves without a district. The intention is that the supernumerary judge and justice will then become liable to be temporarily assigned from time to time to any place in which their services may happen to be required and to be permanently assigned to a particular circuit or district, as the case may be, on the occurrence of a vacancy, and that there will be no further appointments to the bench in either the Circuit Court or the District Court until the numberof judges and justices falls below the smaller numbers for which provision is being made in the Bill. Unfortunately the reassignment of the judges and justices cannot be effected without a certain amount of unavoidable disturbance and the rearrangement of circuits and districts will not be free from complications. The policy will be to try to effect the proposed reorganisation with as little inconvenience to all concerned as the nature of the case permits and, with this object, to seek the co-operation of the judges and justices themselves in making the best possible arrangements.
I pass now to the proposal to increase the jurisdiction of the Circuit and the District Courts. In both cases, the justification for the increase is the same, namely, that money has lost more than half its value since the present financial limits were set by the Courts of Justice Act, 1924. What is proposed is, therefore, no more than a restoration of the status quo.It was always the intention that the Circuit Court should be able to deal with substantial actions and the Act of 1924 was so framed as to devolve on the court a general jurisdiction in civil cases, both at law and equity, subject only to the financial limits (which it is now proposed to double) and to the express exclusions specified in the Act. It is clear that a court so constituted was intended to be, for all practical purposes, a miniature High Court, and this is further evidenced by the extensive criminal jurisdiction that was vested in the court and by the fact that, in civil matters, the court was given unlimited jurisdiction on consent.
So long as the value of money remained at the 1924 level an action involving a claim for £300 could fairly be regarded as a substantial action. This is no longer the case, with the result that litigants are being put to the expense of having to take proceedings in the High Court to settle disputes about things that could formerly have been settled in the Circuit Court merely because these things have altered in their money value. Thus, if one considers the stake alone,there is an unanswerable case for readjusting the existing financial limitations to bring them into line with the present value of money. But this is not the whole story. A major item in the cost of litigation in the High Court is the expense of bringing the parties and their witnesses and, on occasion, their solicitors to Dublin and these expenses have increased very considerably in recent years. As a result, the cost of recovering sums between £300 and £600 is quite out of proportion to the amount at issue. The cost of litigation must always be a matter of grave concern for the Government and for the legal profession. For the profession, because the quantity of litigation is inevitably reduced when its cost is too expensive; and for the Government, because it is manifestly contrary to the public interest that people should be prevented from seeking justice for fear of the cost.
As to the effect of the proposed increase of jurisdiction it would be difficult, if not impossible, to forecast precisely the amount of business at present being transacted in the High Court and the Circuit Court that is likely to be transferred to the Circuit and District Courts respectively, if the provisions of this Bill become law, and I do not think that anything would be gained by my attempting a statistical assessment of the probabilities. From such statistics as are readily available, it does not appear that the change will greatly affect the volume of business in the Circuit Court but, of course, it is bound to increase the volume of business in the District Court.
As regards the miscellaneous provisions of the Bill, I must first refer to Section 12. Under the law as it stands an accused person has an absolute right to have his trial transferred from the Circuit Court to the Central Criminal Court if he is charged with an offence for which the maximum penalty exceeds one year's imprisonment or five years' penal servitude. It has been represented to me that this right has been and is being abused and that the practice has grown and is becoming more and more frequent of applying for transfers simply to delay the proceedings. As a result, more thanhalf the time of the Central Criminal Court has been taken up in recent years with transferred cases, most of which could have had a fair trial in the local venue. Thus, the High Court has been needlessly deprived, for a considerable part of the year, of the services of one of its judges who can ill be spared for the disposal of business that can and should be dealt with in the Circuit Court. The existence of the abuse to which I refer is best evidenced by the fact that most of the applications for transfers in recent years are applications for transfers from the Circuit Court in Dublin which draws its jurors from the same Jury Book that the jurors for the Central Criminal Court are drawn from. In such cases it is perfectly obvious that a fair trial is just as likely to be had in one court as in the other save in quite exceptional circumstances. But, as matters stand, the accused is not required to show that there are such special circumstances or indeed to show cause of any kind. Even in the country, there is much less justification than there used to be for permitting the transfer of trials to the Central Criminal Court, as the Circuit judge is now empowered (since the enactment of Section 19 of the Criminal Justice Act of 1951) to transfer a criminal trial from one place in the circuit to another, if he is of opinion that a fair trial cannot be had in the first mentioned place. Section 12 of the present Bill provides that, in future, transfers to the Central Criminal Court shall be made only on the order of the High Court and, instead of a transfer to the Central Court, the High Court may order a transfer to another circuit. The existing statutory provision on the subject, namely Section 54 of the Courts of Justice Act, 1924, is being repealed.
Section 14 of the Bill deals with the reconstitution of the Superior Courts Rules Committee by providing that the Council of the Incorporated Law Society shall be entitled to two nominated members instead of the president of the society who is at present an ex-officio member. This is being done at the request of thesociety. The section also provides specifically for the power to make rules in regard to election petitions. The rules committee are doubtful if this power exists at present. Section 19 of the Bill allows for the transfer of a part-heard action in the Circuit Court from one venue to another and validates an existing practice which is considered to be of doubtful legality. Section 28 of the Bill which deals with desertion cases also validates an existing practice which we have been advised has no legal foundation. Finally there is Section 30 which makes it quite clear that there is an appeal to the Circuit Court from an order of the District Court under Section 1 of the Probation of Offenders Act, 1907.
So much for the main provisions. The immediate cost of granting to the members of the judiciary the higher salaries proposed and of providing an additional High Court judge will be approximately £29,000 a year but the eventual cost, when the number of circuit judges and district justices has been reduced, is likely to be no more than £16,000 a year. The increased salaries will, of course, result in higher pension charges and there may be some slight increase in judicial travelling and subsistence expenses.
Before I conclude I should like, on behalf of the Government, to thank the members of the Select Committee of the House who so kindly gave their time to the study of judicial remuneration and produced such a helpful report.