Legal fees in tribunals are having a dramatic effect on the demand for judicial office, writes Carol Coulter, Legal Affairs Correspondent.
There were only two applications for a position on the Supreme Court when it became vacant last year, according to the annual report of the Judicial Appointments Advisory Board. They were from a solicitor and a senior counsel. Neither was appointed, as the Government asked the President to nominate a serving judge of the High Court, Mr Justice McCracken.
The dearth of applications for the highest judicial appointments in the land must cause concern for the Government and for the judiciary itself, as it appears that the most experienced members of the profession eschew public service for private practice.
The Judicial Appointments Advisory Board's figures show a decline in the overall number of applications for judicial office over the past six years. This must reflect the money being made by practising barristers or solicitors compared with the salaries paid to judges.
Judges' salaries are not modest by most people's standards. A judge of the Supreme Court is paid €182,901, a High Court judge €172,409, a Circuit Court judge earns €125,933 and a judge of the District Court €104,943. The presidents of each of these courts is paid more, with the chief justice earning €219,885, the president of the High Court €194,894, president of the Circuit Court €176,904 and of the District Court €130,430. All are eligible for generous pensions on their retirement.
However, these figures compare unfavourably with the fees being paid to barristers in tribunals, for example, which run to millions, or to the earnings reportedly made by unnamed solicitors involved in high-profile family law actions recently, where the cases went to the High or Supreme Courts and therefore had written reports.
The only court to which the number of applications has been increasing is the High Court, and there the increase has been modest. There were 16 applications for two vacancies in March 1996, and 14 for two vacancies in May of that year. These figures remained relatively steady until last year, when there were 14 applications for one vacancy in January, 27 for four vacancies in June, and 25 for one vacancy in December.
In March 1996, there were five applications for three vacancies on the Supreme Court, and in January 2000 there were six for three vacancies. Last year, there were only two. But it is in the Circuit and District Courts that the decline in applications has been most dramatic.
In June 1996, there were 196 applications for nine vacancies on the Circuit Court. This figure rose steadily over the next three years, so that in December 1999 there were 224 applications for one vacancy. But a year later, in January 2001, there were only 100 applications, and this continued to fall over the next two years, to only 90 applications for two vacancies in September 2002.
The pattern is the same in the District Court, where the vast majority of applications have been from solicitors.
In August 1996, there were 233 applications for three vacancies. This rose to 306 for one vacancy in August 1999, and 301 for a single vacancy in December of that year. By March 2000, that had halved to 155 applications for one vacancy, and the decline continued to the point where there were only 98 applicants for four vacancies in June 2002, and 93 for one vacancy in July. It is highly likely that many of these applications were duplicates of earlier ones.
Since the higher courts became available to solicitors last year they have been applying in large numbers, with 37 per cent of all applications to the High Court and 50 per cent of those to the Supreme Court coming from solicitors. The Circuit Court, until relatively recently the exclusive preserve of barristers, now has a majority of solicitor applicants, with 57 per cent of all applications in 2002 coming from this branch of the profession.
This tends to disguise what would otherwise be an even more dramatic collapse in barrister applications.
Women remain less likely to apply for positions on the bench than men, with only 11 per cent of all applicants to the High Court coming from women. The figure is closer to 25 per cent for the Circuit and District Courts, however, and almost a third (30.8 per cent) of appointees to the bench last year were women.