A self-regulating body for the judiciary, to be called a judicial council, should be set up on a statutory basis, according to a judges' committee considering the matter.
It would deal with judges' pay and working conditions, training and education as well as the problem of judicial conduct and discipline.
Setting up such a council is the central proposal in the report, published yesterday, from the committee set up two years ago to consider judicial conduct and ethics. It was set up following the publication of the Sixth Report of the Working Group on a Courts Commission, which had touched on the subject.
This committee, representing all levels of the judiciary, was chaired by the then chief justice, the late Mr Justice Hamilton, who was succeeded on retirement by Mr Justice Keane.
The report has gone to the Government and the Minister for Justice is considering it, a spokesman said, and the Minister would be coming at the proposals "from a positive point of view", as he had suggested setting up the committee.
The committee concluded that the existing structures for dealing with concerns about judicial misconduct were inadequate. These are the removal of a judge by passing a resolution of both Houses of the Oireachtas, on grounds of stated misbehaviour or incapacity.
This measure was threatened in the cases of Mr Justice O'Flaherty and Judge Cyril Kelly following the Sheedy affair. Both resigned before any such steps were taken.
"There are steps which would justify the invocation of this procedure," said the judges' report. "However, there are other instances of judicial misconduct which may be less serious but may merit some form of investigation . . . It was concluded that formal structures should exist to deal with such instances of judicial misbehaviour."
The proposed judicial council, of which all judges would be members, would have a board and three committees. The board would consist of the Chief Justice and the presidents of the High, the Circuit and the District courts, four ordinary judges, one from each of these courts to be elected by their colleagues, and a co-opted judge.
There would be a judicial conduct and ethics committee, a judicial studies and publications committee and a general committee. They would have the same structure and representation as the board.
Under the proposals a complaint against a judge made by a member of the public or a lawyer would go to the judicial conduct and ethics committee.
Where the complaint was of a serious nature, and could not be disposed of informally or through the appeal mechanism in the courts, it would be dealt with by a panel of inquiry. This would have three members, two of them judges nominated by the committee and a lay person drawn from a panel of three "people of standing in the community" appointed by the Attorney General.
Where misconduct is established, this would lead to a private reprimand to the judge in question, a public reprimand, or a recommendation to the Attorney General that the government should consider tabling to the Dail and Seanad a resolution for his removal.
The judicial studies committee would be responsible for training and education and for the publication of a journal. The general committee would be responsible for pay and conditions.
The proposals have been generally welcomed by the bodies representing the legal profession, the Law Society and the Bar Council. However, Mr Ken Murphy, director general of the Law Society, was critical of the absence of any legal representative on the proposed conduct and ethics committee.
"It is vital the new body enjoys the full confidence of the solicitors," he said.
"That is only possible if it has a representative of practising lawyers, as is the case in other jurisdictions. We don't understand the objections to this in the light of the experience, quoted in this report, of other jurisdictions."