THE LONG-AWAITED judicial council will hopefully be brought into existence this year, the President of the High Court, Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns, told the annual conference of the Law Society at the weekend.
The council would have responsibility for judicial standards and conduct, and would set up a complaints and disciplinary procedure for judges.
Mr Justice Kearns said the Chief Justice, following consultation with the presidents of the different courts, had directed that a plenary meeting of the judiciary be held in the next few weeks which may bring finality to any remaining judicial concerns about the proposal.
The proposal for a council was first made in a report from then chief justice Mr Justice Ronan Keane about a decade ago. The momentum towards bringing it into existence was interrupted by the controversy surrounding the charging of Circuit Court judge Brian Curtin with possession of child pornography in 2004.
He was acquitted by direction of the trial judge because of a defect in the warrant, and the Oireachtas then moved to impeach him. He eventually resigned on health grounds in 2006. The issue of a judicial council has been in discussion among the judiciary and between the judiciary and the Department of Justice since.
“Many, if not most, of the concerns of the judiciary have been addressed in the latest draft emanating recently from the Department of Justice,” Mr Justice Kearns said.
“Contrary to some media reports, this is a development which the judiciary fully supports, not least because it is in our own interests to have such a body, both to promote the welfare and good standing of the judiciary, to ensure ongoing judicial education and also to provide a fair and calibrated method of dealing with complaints against judges.”
Once the proposals from the Department of Justice were considered at the judicial meeting, it would then be for the Government to bring forward the necessary legislation to establish the judicial council, he said.
“To enable the judicial council to function in a proper and professional manner it will then be necessary that appropriate funding for the new body be provided, given that it will require its own budget for offices, qualified personnel and secretarial services. Before it actually becomes operational it will also require the provision of suitable digital audio recording facilities in all courts so that complaints can be referenced to an accurate record of what actually takes place in court in any given case,” he said.
Mr Justice Kearns said he had set up a working group on two aspects of personal injury litigation. One was to consider changes to existing practices to improve the efficiency and reduce the cost of legal proceedings in the field of medical negligence. At the moment this often involved lengthy waiting times before cases start.
He said he was very much in favour of splitting trials in cases where liability is very strongly disputed, so that the assessment of damages awaits decisions on liability. He suggested there might be a separate list for medication negligence cases, which at present were part of the general personal injuries list, as there was no guarantee at the moment that a particular case would get heard on the day planned.
He also said there were 650 pre-leave asylum judicial review applications awaiting disposal last month, and 105 post-leave applications. The sheer volume imposed a significant financial burden on the State. To help ease this burden, he had obtained a commitment from the majority of the judges of the High Court to provide supplemental and additional sitting days in September.