The jury system for inquests should be abolished, unless a panel for selecting jurors is introduced, according to the retiring Cork City Coroner, Mr Cornelius Riordan (70).
According to Mr Riordan, who has spent more than 20 years in the post, the way jurors are selected for inquests is haphazard and unacceptable.
It is open to the presiding coroner to demand an appearance by a juror - but that rarely happens. What does happen is that on the day of an inquest, members of the Garda leave the courtroom and go out on to the streets to round up jurors. "Excuse me, sir, would you mind falling in on a jury panel? It shouldn't take too long."
Mr Riordan says the system, which does not pay jurors even though they may have to attend a lengthy inquest, is "a throwback to the last century". In times past members of the landed gentry made up juries at inquests. To be called was a symbol of a person's status. But naturally, men of means did not seek or require payment. Nowadays anybody, seemingly, will do for jury service, but one thing which has not changed is that there is still no payment.
Mr Riordan, who will continue to practise as a solicitor in Cork, says a panel system should be introduced for jury service or else juries should be abolished. Jurors at the inquest after the Air India disaster off the southwest coast, in June, 1985, sat for five days and heard horrific evidence about the deaths of 131 people when the aircraft was destroyed by a terrorist bomb. Nobody was paid for serving.
How does a coroner feel at the end of a long day when that day has often been filled with sadness and despair? You can't lock it out completely, Mr Riordan says, but over the years, you learn not to bring your work home.
In his time, he has presided over many cases that made national and international headlines. Air India, of course, the Swansea/Cork ferry tragedy in which two children died in their cabins when gas poisoned the air. He also presided at the inquest into the deaths of six Japanese fishermen who were gassed on board their trawler earlier this year when a refrigeration unit developed a leak.
He has presided over inquests into criminal deaths and has noticed the rising graph of deaths due to drug abuse. He has called for an intensive programme of education in this area in schools throughout Cork, but so far, he says, his recommendation has fallen on deaf ears.