Risk of ‘politicised decisions’ over judicial appointments warns European corruption body

The risk of “politicised decisions” over judicial appointments remains under Government legislation, a European corruption body has warned Ireland.

In its ‘corruption’ report on Ireland, the Council of Europe also said that the country has made “no tangible progress” in setting up a new ethics system for its national politicians.

The findings are based on a detailed examination by the Council’s Group of States Against Corruption (GRECO) of outstanding political and judicial findings the group made against Ireland in an interim compliance report in September 2020.

The Second Compliance Report, published today, concludes that Ireland has “now implemented satisfactorily or dealt with in a satisfactory manner” five of the eleven recommendations contained in the Fourth Round Evaluation Report, which was published in November 2014.

But it said four have still not been implemented, over seven years on, and two have been partly implemented.

In relation to the judiciary, it highlights three main areas of concern:

  • The envisaged replacement of the Judicial Appointments Advisory Board (JAAB) by a Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC), as contained in the Judicial Appointments Commission Bill, “remains questionable”. It said the composition of the current JAAB, which includes a majority of judges, is considered “more suitable” for judicial appointments than the proposed JAC, which would have an equal number of representatives of the judiciary and lay persons;
  • The fact that under the proposed Bill, the Government would still receive a non-prioritised list of unranked candidates is also a concern, “as the risk of politicized decisions remains”. GRECO stressed the importance of a merit-based selection procedure leading to a targeted shortlist of only the very best candidates, ranked in order of priority;
  • On training, GRECO said that while induction and in-service training of judges has started as a permanent structure that attendance appears to be low, with authorities citing a backlog of cases and a limited number of judges available. The report encouraged the authorities to consider further efforts to increase training.

In addition, the report said that while the establishment of the Judicial Council has been an important development, “more should be done” to ensure constitutional safeguards of the judiciary.

In relation to politicians and the national parliament, the report noted what it said was the Government’s “commitment” to implement recommendations and continue with reforms of the existing ethics statutory framework.

But it said that “no tangible progress” has been made since the adoption of the previous compliance report.

“The authorities are encouraged to step up their efforts to introduce a new ethics statutory framework as required by the outstanding recommendations,” the report said.

GRECO was established in 1999 by the Council of Europe to monitor States’ compliance with the organisation’s anti-corruption standards.

The objective is to improve the capacity of its members to fight corruption by monitoring their compliance with the Council of Europe anti-corruption standards through a process of mutual evaluation and peer pressure.

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