The president of the Law Reform Commission and former Supreme Court judge Catherine McGuinness has said there are too many retired and unemployed people sitting on juries in criminal trials.
Speaking on RTÉ radio yesterday, Ms McGuinness said juries needed to be representative of society to ensure a fair trial and that people who did not have day-time commitments had become over-represented on juries. Working people, particularly the self-employed, who were called for jury service were "very poorly" treated, she added.
"It can often be just the people who are available during the day time, like people who are not employed and people who are retired and so on. Now there's nothing against those people I hasten to say, but it doesn't reflect the community."
People from a cross-section of society were called for jury duty but there was a considerable number who failed to attend, she said. "Quite a number of people simply don't turn up at all. If you watch the empanelment of a jury in most trials, you will find there are a lot of people whose names are called and there's simply no reply."
A "rather derisory fine", currently €63, was imposed on those who failed to attend, absented themselves during a trial or gave a false excuse for not being able to attend. A new fine of up to €500 is to be introduced under the forthcoming Civil Law Miscellaneous Provisions Bill, which would be a more realistic penalty, she added.
However, Ms McGuinness said she would rather there was a greater level of encouragement for workers to sit on juries, rather than just increasing the punishment. "I think we treat our jury people very poorly. We do very little to compensate them for their lack of earnings . . . It's all right if you're working in a job like the public service where you are allowed time off to go on jury service but if you're self-employed, say as a plumber, an electrician, or a doctor, it is more of a difficulty to serve on a jury."
Several other judges had remarked juries were increasingly less representative of society, she said, and the concern had been raised during the commission's meetings in relation to setting up its programme for law reform which will last until 2014.
"I think probably the Law Reform Commission will want to look in our third programme at this whole area about how we treat our juries and how we ensure that our criminal trials are served by the best possible kind of juries that are in accordance with the constitutional right to a fair trial."
