Before we go to the next business on the Order Paper, the Seanad will recollect that we had the final stages of the Judiciary Bill before us last week, and the Bill was then sent back to the Dáil. There were 44 amendments inserted in it in the Seanad. The Dáil have sent a message to say that they have accepted 42 out of the 44 amendments. The two which they did not accept were, first, the one that altered the description "District Justice" to that of "District Judge," and the other was the one that transferred the liability for the salaries of District Justices and made them a charge upon the Central Fund. The Seanad will remember that a suggestion was made—I think it came from me—that the objection of the Government to the last clause, which transferred the salaries to the Central Fund, might be met, if for the first two or three years they were made payable annually on the Estimates, and at the end of two or three years they were then transferred and made a charge on the Central Fund.
The Dáil, on the suggestion of the Government, have accepted an alternative amendment to ours to that effect, and I understand that their reasons for rejecting the amendment which proposed to alter the title "District Justice" to that of "District Judge" were owing to the fact that a number of Acts have been passed, most of them temporary, in which the expression used throughout is District Justice, and it would be necessary to bring in amending Bills, if that amendment were insisted on, in all those cases. Once the House has got the concession from the Government and the Dáil, by which those salaries are to be transferred to the Central Fund, it seems to me that the question of title sinks into comparative insignificance. The Attorney-General is present, and I will mention the two amendments.
