Shatter says Government is violating spirit of judicial appointments

Fine Gael accused the Government of violating "both the spirit and intent" of the procedures applied in the appointment of judges.

The party's spokesman on justice, Mr Alan Shatter, said that at all stages the Judicial Appointments Advisory Board had acted with integrity, and he accepted that all appointments made by the Government derived from lists of seven names furnished by the board.

"However, the number of persons appointed by the Minister to the district court as a result of receipt by him of representations from his own colleagues, or from Government-friendly Independent deputies, leads heavily to the suspicion that if you are short listed by the board, you are more likely to be appointed to a district court vacancy, if representations are made on your behalf by a member of one of the Government parties, or by an Independent deputy on whose support the Government parties are dependent."

Mr Shatter said there was clearly a need to enact legislation to render it unlawful for any person to make any such representations and to require by law that any made were not considered by the Minister for Justice or the Government in determining who should be nominated for judicial appointment.

He was speaking during the debate on the Fine Gael-sponsored Courts 2000 Bill, which proposes that the names of nominees for judicial appointment be referred to an Oireachtas committee before they are passed to the President. The committee would decide if the nominee should attend before it, and the Government would take into account its view on the appointment.

The Bill, which also proposes a broadening of the pool of lawyers from which High Court and Supreme Court judges can be selected, will be voted on tonight.

Details released under the Freedom of Information Act had shown that Oireachtas members of both Fianna Fail, including the Taoiseach, and the PDs, as well as Independent deputies on whom the Government depended to stay in office, had made written representations in favour of specific individuals receiving a judicial nomination, said Mr Shatter.

He added that the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, had said, in a Dail reply, that eight persons on whose behalf representations were made were subsequently appointed, all to the district court bench. The Minister, he said, had added he did not regard the representations as particularly relevant.

Mr Shatter said that since April 1998, serving ministers - Dr Michael Woods, Mr David Andrews, Mr Dermot Ahern, Mr Brian Cowen, Mr Robert Molloy, Dr James McDaid and Ms Sile de Valera - had made representations to the Minister.

Mr O'Donoghue said that while he endorsed wholeheartedly the principle the Bill espoused, he would, in the very near future, introduce his own comprehensive Bill. Considerable additional matters, not comprehended in Mr Shatter's Bill, would be included.

He believed it was better to work with the existing structures, which had only been in place since 1995, than to introduce new and untested structures which might compromise the integrity of the judicial process.