A BODY promoting high standards among judges would ensure “continued public confidence in judicial integrity”, Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern said yesterday.
Mr Ahern made the remarks as he published the scheme of the Judicial Council Bill 2010. The Attorney General has been asked by Mr Ahern to arrange a formal drafting of the Bill.
The proposal would provide for two new bodies: a Judicial Council to promote education and the independence of the judiciary; and a Judicial Conduct Committee which would deal with complaints against judges.
Mr Ahern emphasised the participation of lay people in the complaints committee. Government-appointed lay persons will make up three of 11 members of the complaints committee, the rest being members of the judiciary. The participation of lay persons would “provide an open and transparent means of investigating complaints that heretofore have had no means of inquiry,” Mr Ahern said.
The committee will deal with misconduct which is not serious enough to call for a judge to be removed from office. All investigations will be carried out in private, and neither the identity of the complainant nor the judge may be made public, whatever the outcome of the complaint.
The publication of any information or evidence in relation to complaints will be an offence, punishable on summary conviction with a fine of up to €3,000.
Mr Ahern said the participation of all judges in the independent council would give the judiciary a “sense of ownership” of the council’s work and would “ensure the independence of the judiciary is not compromised”.
The proposals had been the subject of “very extensive consultations with the judiciary for some time,” he said. They took into account a report from 2000 by a committee overseen by Mr Justice Ronan Keane.
In 2001 draft legislation that included permitting the removal of a judge from office failed to obtain all-party support and was withdrawn. Mr Ahern outlined the range of sanctions which would be available in a case where an allegation turned out to be well founded. They include the issuing of advice or a reprimand to the judge concerned; a recommendation that the judge follow a specific course of action; or the recommendation of procedural or organisational change.
Mr Ahern has asked the Human Rights Commission for its views on the Bill. The Opposition was critical of both of the length of time it had taken to produce the proposals and the fact that a general scheme rather than a Bill was published yesterday.
Labour justice spokesman Pat Rabbitte and Fine Gael justice spokesman Alan Shatter spoke of the importance in balancing judicial independence with an effective complaints mechanism.
Mr Shatter proposed that the Oireachtas Justice Committee should be given the power to approve or reject the lay people appointed by the Government.
