THE MINISTER for Justice has trenchantly defended the system of judicial appointments, but declined to comment on remarks by High Court judge Mr Justice Peter Kelly who said the current method did not work.
In the latest issue of the Dublin Solicitors’ Bar Association magazine, The Parchment, Mr Justice Kelly says: “The JAAB . . . doesn’t really work. We all know cases of people who would be excellent judicial appointments and who are passed over in favour of people not so well qualified.”
A statement from the office of the Minister, Alan Shatter, said: “The Minister does not wish to comment on recent comments attributed to an eminent judge other than to say that he is sure the judge did not intend to question the independence and integrity of any person appointed to judicial office.”
He said the Courts and Courts Officers Act, 1995, had established the JAAB and the Government was bound to comply with those arrangements.
Under this Act all applicants for judicial office, apart from serving judges, must apply first to the JAAB, which forwards names to the Government.
However, the JAAB presents a large number of names for each vacancy, from which the Government makes its selection. As it states in its annual reports, it “does not have any function in deciding who should be appointed to judicial office . . . does not give any indication of the relative merits of persons”.
Last June representatives of the judiciaries of Europe met in Dublin and issued a declaration in which they called for an independent and transparent system of appointing judges.
It recommends that procedures for recruitment or promotion of judges should be in the hands of a body independent of government and free from government influence. This body should make its decisions in an open and transparent way where all candidates are assessed against published criteria, and the whole process should be open to scrutiny by the public, according to the report, which was endorsed by Chief Justice Mrs Justice Susan Denham.
The ministerial statement yesterday added that officials had been examining the appointment procedure with particular reference to practice in other jurisdictions.
Separately, Fine Gael MEP Gay Mitchell has called for government nominees for judicial appointment to be vetted by an Oireachtas committee before they go to the President.