I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."
The Bill restates the statute law relating to juries in civil and criminal trials. The principal Act is the Juries Act, 1927, which was amended by the Juries Acts of 1945 and 1961 and certain provisions of other Acts. The Bill proposes to repeal all the existing provisions so that the relevant law will now be contained in one Act.
The Bill proposes to make large changes in the present law. The most important changes concern the persons qualified and liable for jury service. The 1927 Act based liability for jury service on the occupation of landed property of a certain rateable value. Stated shortly, the Act provided that Irish citizens aged 21 or upwards and under 65 who were on the electoral registers and who possessed the rating qualification should alone be qualified and liable. Moreover, the Act provided that women should not be liable for jury service unless they themselves applied to serve. As a result, only a small part of the adult population was qualified for jury service. In particular, the rating qualification excluded all men, however well educated, who did not happen to have landed property; and in practice women hardly ever served on juries. In the ten years up to 1974 only nine women are recorded as having applied to serve and so became qualified to do so, and of these only five were called for service and three actually served. It is of interest to mention that in 1963, the last year for which figures are readily available, the number of persons liable for jury service was just under 84,000.
I should now refer, briefly, to the procedure under the 1927 Act by which the persons liable for jury service have been identified and selected, because this procedure has depended on the rating qualification. When the officers of the local authorities make up the electoral registers, they mark the names of those liable for jury service with the letter "J”.
Every year the officer prepares a draft jurors list containing the names of the persons considered to be liable for jury service and submits it to the county registrar, who revises and settles the list after holding public revision sessions. After that the names of the persons liable are ready for entry in the jurors books, which are made up by county registrar and from which jurors are empanelled as required. The jurors books are not made up annually, but only when a book is exhausted and a new one is required. When panels of jurors were required, they have had to be taken in strict alphabetical order from the jurors books. Each jurors book has remained in force until all the persons whose names were included in it had been summoned once for jury service. The life of a jurors book has varied between three and ten years. The books have been revised annually by deleting the names of persons no longer liable, but persons who become qualified for jury service during the life of a jurors book cannot be included in the book and are, therefore, in fact, free from liability to be summoned until a new jurors book has to be made up.
I was of opinion that this restricted system of liability for jury service was unfair and I have been anxious to change it so as to remove the sex and property qualifications. I was strengthened in my views by the reports on jury service on these points made as long ago as 1965 by the Committee on Court Practice and Procedure under the chairmanship of Mr. Justice Walsh. Accordingly, I had the drafting of fresh legislation put in hand and it was introduced in the Seanad in July of last year. Its preparation and more especially the construction of a system to implement the changes proved long drawn out and quite difficult. The scheme was evolved by a working party representative of the county registrars, the local authorities and the Departments of Local Government and Justice and I would like to convey my thanks to the members of the working party. In the meantime the decision of the Supreme Court was given on 12th December last in the case of Máirín de Búrca and Mary Anderson v. the Attorney General. The court held unanimously that the provision in the 1927 Act restricting liability for jury service to persons with the requisite rateable qualification was contrary to the Constitution and—by a majority of four to one—that the virtual exclusion of women from jury service was also unconstitutional. This decision made the need for the new Bill a matter of urgency.
The main purpose of the Bill is to provide this new system. At the same time, the opportunity has been taken to rewrite the existing law and, in doing so, to make a large number of substantial changes. These, I hope, will considerably improve the law. These changes follow generally recommendations made by the Committee on Court Practice and Procedure in their second and fourth interim reports entitled "Jury Service" and "Jury Challenges" respectively. I should like to pay tribute to the painstaking and valuable work that the committee have done and my only regret is that so much time has elapsed since they reported. Once again a Minister for Justice has the agreeable duty of expressing in public his thanks to Mr. Justice Walsh and his colleagues for the public benefits they have provided by their examination of the difficult matters they have been asked to consider. In the present case, it is right to mention in particular that the committee anticipated the recent decision of the Supreme Court by recommending that the rating qualification for jurors should be abolished and, by a majority, that the exemption of women should also be abolished. The committee also recommended that, in consequence of the abolition of the rating qualification, jurors should be empanelled directly from the electoral registers; and this is what the Bill proposes. In the preparation of the Bill consideration has also been given to recommendations in the valuable report of the English Departmental Committee on Jury Service under the chairmanship of Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest, which was published in 1965. I have also had the advantages of studying the recent legislation in Northern Ireland in 1974 and 1975 governing juries.
I said that the Bill replaces the existing statute law on juries. As a result, it contains a certain amount of detail which at first sight might seem unnecessary. But I feel sure that anybody who takes the trouble to compare the Bill with the 1927 Act and the amending enactments will agree that it will be a great benefit to have all the relevant law in one Act. Moreover, the 1927 Act goes into a great deal of detail on matters of procedure, such as the method of balloting for juries in court. Much of this detail can be left to administrative arrangements and is, therefore, not repeated in the Bill. As a result of these omissions and of other simplifications, the Bill will be only about a third of the length of the existing statute law, and I am sure we shall all be grateful for that. The explanatory memorandum attempts to summarise the provisions of the Bill and draws attention to the more important departures from the present law. I hope Deputies will find it useful in examining the Bill.
I come now to the provisions of the Bill. I do not think I need go into any great details as many of the provisions relate to the procedural matters, the details of which are set out in the explanatory memorandum.
Part I contains the usual formal provisions.
Part II includes the most important provisions which relate to qualification and liability for jury service.
Section 5 is technical, though important. It provides for the division of the country into jury districts. County boroughs will no longer be separate jury districts as at present but will be included in the respective counties. The present power to subdivided counties into jury districts is being continued.
Section 6 is the most important section as it states the new rule as to qualification and liability for jury service. Every citizen aged 18 or upwards and under 70 who is entered in a register of Dáil electors will be qualified and liable unless he is ineligible under section 7 or disqualified under section 8. The reduction from 21 to 18 in the lower age limit and the increase from 65 to 70 in the upper age limit are important changes and the former at least is a matter as to which there is room for some difference of opinion.
It may be argued in favour of keeping the lower age limit at 21 that many persons aged 18, 19 or 20 are likely to be of insufficient maturity and experience to discharge the duties of jurors satisfactorily. In particular, older people involved in litigation might feel aggrieved at the thought of their cases being decided by juries including members as young as 18. On the other hand, there is the consideration that younger persons who are themselves involved in litigation might feel equally aggrieved at the total exclusion of persons under 21 from the jury.
There are two arguments of principle in favour of reducing the lower age limits to 18. First, since the Legislature and the public, by reducing the voting age and the age for making a will to 18, have accepted the propositions that people of 18 are sufficiently mature to be trusted to take vital decisions, it follows that we ought to regard these young people as sufficiently mature to serve as jurors. The second argument is that the involvement of young persons in the administration of the law should increase their sense of being responsible citizens. There are also practical difficulties that would follow from keeping the lower age at 21. The electoral registers, from which jurors will be selected, include all persons of 18 or over and it would require a substantial amount of administrative work and additional expenditure to distinguish persons under 21. The law could, of course, provide that persons under 21 should be ineligible even though their names were on the electoral registers, but there might be considerable difficulties in determining whether particular persons summoned from the registers were over or under that age. Some persons under 21 might conceal the fact because they objected on principle to not being treated as qualified to serve; others, thought over 21, might claim to be under that age in order to avoid serving. As a result the county registrars or the courts might have to require the production of birth certificates to determine whether young persons were under or over 21.
The Government consider that on the whole the right course is to reduce the lower age limit to 18. If either party is against the inclusion of a young person in the jury, the party may challenge him under section 20, which section, as I shall mention later, increases the number of jurors who may be challenged without cause shown. There should be little difficulty in avoiding having a disproportionate number of young persons on a jury since the proportion of persons aged 18 to 20 who will be selected for jury service is likely in any event to be small. Moreover, as I shall also mention later, whole-time students will be excusable as of right if summoned as jurors. I should add that in England and Northern Ireland the lower age limit for jury service has been reduced to 18.
The raising of the upper age limit from 65 to 70 will, I feel, be generally welcomed. There must be many people, including retired people, between those ages who feel, and are, perfectly competent to serve on juries, and they may well resent being treated as too old to do so. But under section 9, read with Part II of the First Schedule, they will have the right to be excused if summoned.
Section 7 provides that the persons specified in Part I of the First Schedule shall be ineligible for jury service. The classes of persons to be ineligible correspond broadly to those ineligible under the present law. The differences are summarised in paragraph 47 of the explanatory memorandum. There are two matters which call for comment. The first is that a considerably wider range of persons than at present will be ineligible on the ground of being "persons concerned with the administration of justice". The exclusion of these persons is desirable in order to preserve the essentially lay character of juries and also because of the grievance that accused persons in criminal cases might well feel, if the jurors trying them included lawyers or members of the Garda Síochána or other persons connected with the administration of justice. The second matter is that the complete exemption from jury service enjoyed by civil servants and local government officials under the present law is being abolished. Instead the Bill provides that heads of Department et cetera shall be excusable as of right and other official only on a certificate by the head of the Department. This scheme was recommended by the Courts Committee. I shall return to this aspect later.
Section 8, to state its effect shortly, proposes that a person should be disqualified permanently from jury service if he has been sentenced to five years' imprisonment or more and that a person who has been sentenced to at least three months' imprisonment, provided he has actually served any part of the sentence, shall be disqualified for ten years. The section will apply to sentences passed in any part of Ireland. The provision is a substantial departure from the present rule, in section 4 of the Juries Act, 1927, which was, in my view, more than ripe for reconsideration. The 1927 Act provision excludes only persons convicted of treason, treason-felony, any other felony or perjury, and this applies however small the sentence passed and however long ago the conviction occurred. Thus a person convicted when a child of stealing an apple is in law disqualified for life but a person who has been convicted of a large-scale fraud which happens to be a misdemeanour and been sentenced to ten years' imprisonment is not disqualified. Section 8 proposes a more logical basis for the disqualification of convicted persons.
Section 9 provides that certain persons shall be excusable as of right from jury service and that other persons may be excused for good reason at the discretion of the county registrar or the court. The largest class of persons excusable as of right will be those specified in Part II of the First Schedule. These classes are summarised in paragraph 48 of the explanatory memorandum. The Bill proposes to make a procedural change in respect of these classes of persons apart from the changes in the classes themselves. The procedural change is that at present the persons in question cannot be summoned unless they volunteer for jury service; under the Bill they will be liable to be summoned but will be entitled to be excused if they wish. The largest change from the present law is, of course, that women will have no absolute right not to serve. The next most important change is that to which I have referred earlier that public servants, who are at present completely exempt, will instead be liable to be summoned but will be excusable as of right only to the extent provided in Part II of the Schedule. In future the heads of Departments et cetera will be excusable as of right and other members of the staffs will be excusable as of right only if the head gives a certificate that—and I quote—“it would be contrary to the public interest for the civil servant [or other official] to have to serve as a juror because he performs essential and urgent services of public importance that cannot reasonably be performed by another or postponed”. Such certificates will, therefore, be issued only in most exceptional circumstances and in general public servants will serve on juries. The teaching staffs of universities, schools and other educational institutions will be treated, mutatis mutandis, like Government Departments, and in addition whole-time students will, as I have mentioned, be excusable as of right. I have also already referred to the fact that the classes of persons excusable as of right will include persons between the ages of 65 and 70, who are at present not liable for jury service at all.
Under section 9 also persons who have served or duly attended to serve, on juries during the previous three years will be excusable as of right. The section also gives statutory recognition to the practice by which a judge sometimes, after a long trial, exempts the jurors from further jury service for a fixed period or for life.
Section 9 also gives a general power to county registrars to excuse any person summoned for jury service for good reason. At present jurors are excused by the judges, though in some instances the judges have delegated the power to excuse to the registrars of their courts. To give a general discretion such as proposed seems clearly desirable, especially now that so many more people will be liable for jury service. This applies especially in the case of women, who may have homes and young children to look after. Similarly, the county registrar might excuse a person for pressing family or business reasons or if he is in ill-health.
Section 9 gives a person whom the county registrar has refused to excuse a right of appeal to a judge of the court to which he has been summoned. It also provides that, at the stage when the juror is required to be in attendance at the court, the judge shall have a similar duty or discretion to excuse as the county registrar has at the stage when the juror is summoned.
Part III of the Bill contains the procedural provisions as to the empanelling and summoning of jurors, the selection of the jury from the panel, the mode of swearing, the rights of the parties to challenge jurors and a few other matters. There are few questions of principle involved and I need only mention the more important changes from the present law.
Section II provides that the county registrars shall empanel jurors—that is to say, select from the electroal registers the persons who should be summoned to attend the court. No special method of selection is prescribed but the registrar will be required to use "a procedure of random or other non-discriminatory selection". This contrasts with the present law, under which, as I have mentioned, the composition of the panels is predetermined alphabetically according to the order in which the names appear in the jurors books. The county registrars will be given guidance as to a suitable method of random selection in the administrative instructions that will be issued to them under section 27, to which I shall refer later.
Section 12 provides for the summoning of jurors by the county registrar. The form of summons will be prescribed by the Minister for Justice by regulations. The summons will be accompanied by a notice informing the juror of the effect of the provisions of the Act as to qualification and liability for service, ineligibility, disqualification and excusability as of right; and the notice will inform the person summoned of his right to make representations to the county registrar with a view to the withdrawal of the summons if the juror is not qualified for jury service or wishes or is entitled to be excused. It will be necessary to serve the summons at least a fortnight before the juror's attendance is required, because section 34 (3) provides that the juror will not be liable for non-attendance unless he has had this length of notice. In fact I propose that the administrative instructions should include an arrangement by which the summonses will be served, so far as possible, approximately four to six weeks in advance. Under the present law only four days' notice is required. I propose also to include in the instructions an arrangement for county registrars to send out with the summons a form of return which the juror will be asked to complete and in which he will state whether he is qualified or not. The form can be used in order to apply for excusal. The juror will be under no legal obligation to return the form; but it will be in his interest, as well as helpful to the county registrar, for the junior to return it. It will be helpful to the county registrar because, if the form is returned, he will be better able to judges whether there will be enough jurors or whether he will have to summon more. It will be in the juror's own interest to return the form, because, if he is not qualified or is excusable as of right or has a good claim to be excused, the county registrar will be in a position to tell him that he need not attend the court.
Section 15 includes two important provisions. The first is subsection (3), which provides that, before the balloting for a particular jury is begun, the judge shall warn the jurors present in court that they must not serve if ineligible or disqualified and as to the penalty, under section 36, for doing so. The judge will also invite any juror who knows that he is not qualified, or is in doubt as to whether he is qualified, or who may have an interest in the case or a connection with the case or the parties, to mention this fact if he is selected on the ballot. In the ordinary course, any question whether a person summoned as a juror is or is not qualified will have been raised by the juror himself in the form of return to the summons, but section 15 will provide an extra safeguard in case a juror has neglected to inform the county registrar of his want of qualification or in case he has ceased in the meantime to be qualified. If a juror claims not to be qualified or raises a doubt as to whether he is qualified, the judge should ordinarily have no difficuly in deciding on the matter. In a doubtful case the judge may excuse the juror under section 9 (7)—provided that the juror is willing to be excused—or he might discharge him under section 24, to which I shall refer later, or one of the parties might challenge the juror. The other change that section 15 makes is that in future under subsection (4), jurors will choose their own foreman. At present the first juror to be sworn always becomes foreman.
Sections 17 to 19, which relate to the swearing of juries, include only one change of substance from the present law. This is that section 17 (2) provides that jurors shall be sworn separately. At present jurors may be sworn collectively in all except capital cases. The greater solemnity of individual swearing will, I feel, emphasise the duty of jurors to give a true verdict in accordance with the evidence.
Section 20 proposes to give each party to civil proceedings, and the Attorney General or Director of Public Prosecutions and each accused in criminal proceedings, the right to challenge up to seven jurors without cause. At present in civil proceedings the plaintiff, or the plaintiffs between them and the defendant, or the defendants between them, may challenge up to three jurors without cause shown. In criminal proceedings a single accused may challenge up to five jurors without cause. Where there are more than one accused, they may between them challenge up to ten jurors without cause in treason or murder and up to six in other cases. In criminal cases the Attorney General or Director of Public Prosecutions has no right of challenge without cause, as such, but he may direct any number of the jurors to "stand-by", with the result that they are not included in the jury unless a complete jury cannot be formed without them. The new provision will take away the privileged position of the prosecution. The Committee on Court Practice and Procedure in their Fourth Interim Report, recommended increasing the number of challenges to five. The reason why the Bill proposes to make this further increase to seven, is because of the larger number of younger persons who will be liable owing to the reduction of the lower age age limit to 18. This reduction was, of course, not contemplated by the committee, as the voting age had not been reduced at the time when the committee reported so persons under 21 were not on the electoral register.
Section 24 gives a general discretion to the judge at any stage of a trial to direct that a juror shall not serve, or shall not continue to serve, if the judge considers that for any stated reason it is desirable in the interests of justice to give the direction. The courts committee thought that there was an inherent power to give such a direction but that, as there was some doubt about the matter and as the power would be useful, provision should be made expressly conferring it. They instanced "physical disability on the part of the juror" among the possible grounds for giving the direction. Of course, section 24 will not affect the power or duty of a judge to discharge the whole jury in appropriate cases.
Section 25 provides that in all jury trials the jury may separate before considering their verdict except where the judge otherwise directs. At present the jurors may not be permitted to separate in cases of capital murder, treason or treason-felony. It seems to me that the decision whether the jurors should be allowed to separate can properly be left to the discretion of the judge in all cases.
Part IV of the Bill contains certain general provisions. Only two of the sections call for special comment.
Section 27 provides that the Minister for Justice may issue administrative instructions to county registrars with regard to practice and procedure so as to secure consistency in the administration of the Act. The instructions will relate principally to the method of selecting the persons to be empanelled as jurors and the general procedure for summoning and for dealing with applications for excusal. Draft administrative instructions are at present being prepared in consultation with some of the county registrars in anticipation of the passing of the Bill. Section 27 expressly prohibits the issue of any instructions as to whether particular persons should or should not be summoned for jury service or, if summoned, should or should not be excused. It would clearly be entirely wrong for the Minister to be able to give any such instruction.
Section 29 is intended to protect employees and apprentices from losing pay owing to absence from their work for the purpose of complying with a jury summons. The section provides that they shall be treated for the purpose of the contract of employment or apprenticeship as being employed or apprenticed during any period when they are absent for jury service. They will thus be entitled to their pay for the period as if they were still at work.
I should mention at this point that the Bill makes no provision for jurors to be paid out of public funds for their service. This is also the position at present. I am of the opinion that a citizen should not look to the State for payment for doing a civic duty which will arise most infrequently, perhaps once or twice in a lifetime. If payment were to be made, it would be pointless unless it were adequate to compensate fully for loss, and, of course, that would place a substantial burden on the Exchequer. The provision that an employee will not lose wages through being absent on jury service is a substantial improvement on the present position so far as an employed person is concerned and such a person cannot have any cause for complaint. I recognise that the self-employed person does not run the risk of loss, but at least he can order his affairs so as to minimise his loss and maybe pull up for it later. Moreover, a self-employed person who would suffer grave hardship if he had to leave his business to attend court can apply to the county registrar for excusal.
Part V specifies the offences under the Act. Section 34 penalises failure without reasonable excuse to attend in compliance with a jury summons, not being available when required to serve and unfitness for service by reason of drink or drugs. Section 35 covers making or being party to the making of a false statement for the purpose of enabling the maker or somebody else to avoid jury service and refusing to answer or answering falsely when questioned by a judge for the purpose of determining whether the offender is qualified to serve as a juror. Section 36 makes it an offence to serve as a juror when ineligible or disqualified, and section 37 deals with refusal to be sworn as a juror.
The range of offences is wider than under the existing law. Since all persons on the electoral register will prima facie be qualified and liable, it will be particularly important to penalise the making of a false statement in order to avoid jury service and also to penalise serving when ineligible or disqualified. All the offences will be punishable on summary conviction in the District Court. The maximum penalty will be a fine of £50 except in the case of serving when disqualified owing to a criminal conviction, when it will be £200. The much higher penalty for the latter offence is proposed owing to the particular serious harm that may be done to the interests of justice if a person with a criminal record manages to serve on a jury.
The provisions as to failure to attend the court contrast with the present law. At present the judge must impose a fine of £3 on an absent juror but he may afterwards remit or reduce the fine if the person makes representations for the purpose. The provision for a fine of a fixed amount seems inappropriate when the circumstances may vary so much. Moreover, £3 is clearly far too low a figure in these days. The prospect of a prosecution in the District Court and a fine of up to £50 should discourage persons inclined to disregard jury summonses.
To sum up, the Bill will extend the duty and privilege of jury service to the population as a whole, will improve the present procedure in several respects and will considerably shorten and simplify the general law relating to juries and jury service.
I commend the Bill to the House.