TWO SENIOR legal figures have criticised plans to hold a constitutional referendum to reduce judges’ pay as unnecessary and heavy-handed.
Former Supreme Court judge Hugh O’Flaherty said he was puzzled as to why the matter could not have been dealt with by the levy imposed on the public sector.
Speaking on Radio Kerry yesterday Mr O’Flaherty said he could not understand why judges were deemed exempt from the original levy that reduced the salaries of those “paid out of the public purse”.
“Now to bring in the heavy artillery of a constitutional referendum seems to be overreacting to the whole thing. I would have thought that this was a levy and it should have been applied to everyone,” he said.
The advice the Government received seemed to be that judges were not liable “but if it was a form of taxation, judges were liable to it like everybody else . . . That is the thing that has puzzled me all along,” he said.
Only in the most basic circumstances should the Constitution, which was the oldest in Europe, and probably among the oldest in the world, be interfered with, he said. He criticised “this thing of rushing off having referendums on every conceivable topic when the matter can be dealt with by ordinary legislation perfectly well”.
Retired senior counsel Maurice Gaffney has said a referendum would be unnecessarily expensive and a “more dignified” solution should be found to resolve the pay issue.
“A referendum is a very expensive means of resolving a problem. A problem of this kind, which is a problem of money, should surely be capable of being resolved in some other way. Some more dignified way.”
Speaking on RTÉ radio yesterday Mr Gaffney said holding a referendum would be a “highly regrettable” move and could have an outcome which would be contrary to what was intended.
An alternative way of resolving the issue, possibly using a neutral third party should be found, he said.