Shatter asks officials to review procedures for appointing judges

MINISTER FOR Justice Alan Shatter said he had asked his officials to examine the procedures for the appointment of judges.

“The review is ongoing and I will consider the matter further on completion,” he added.

Mr Shatter said he rejected an inference by Sinn Féin TD Pádraig Mac Lochlainn who asked if he had plans to restore public confidence in judicial appointments in view of media revelations that as many as one-third of judges had personal or political connections to political parties before being appointed to the bench.

Mr Shatter said that under the Constitution judges were appointed by the President on the advice of the Government. Such appointments were dealt with by the judicial appointments advisory board which was established in 1995.

He said Mr Mac Lochlainn’s question was based on a presumption that no lawyer who engaged in democratic politics should ever be appointed to the judiciary and that any such engagement should render an individual ineligible for appointment and that in some way it would permanently contaminate their capacity to act with independence. “It is a tradition in constitutional democracies all over the world that practising lawyers make a substantial contribution to politics and to the development of legislative reform,” he added. “I am sure the deputy’s party, in its parliamentary work, is assisted by members of the legal profession with a variety of expertise.”

Mr Shatter said that by contrast with constitutional democracies, lawyers who favoured democratic politics and proposed legislative reform were usually excluded from judicial appointments in totalitarian dictatorships.

“It is clear from the conduct of our judiciary since the foundation of the State that its members, at all levels within our courts system, have acted with independence and that no political bias, in the sense of a party political bias, is discernible in decisions made and judgments delivered,” he added.