Government to nominate new High Court judges today

The Government will nominate up to four new High Court judges at today's Cabinet meeting after a month of deliberations on a major round of appointments to the court.

It is understood that more than 70 lawyers, half of them barristers, applied for seven vacancies on the High Court and that the Judicial Appointments Advisory Board recommended at least 14 candidates to the Minister for Justice in mid-September.

The vacancies will arise next week when seven High Court judges take up their posts on the newly established Court of Appeal. The Cabinet had been expected to make the seven High Court nominations at its meeting last week, but instead selected four Circuit Court judges for promotion and deferred the remaining nominations.

Ministers may name a fourth High Court nominee in anticipation of the retirement of Mr Justice Daniel Herbert in the coming weeks.

The Government has the right to nominate lawyers who have not been recommended by the advisory board, but it is understood it intends to fill all four upcoming vacancies from the list. Yesterday Government sources were playing down the month-long delay in naming the new judges and denied that this was due to internal wrangling over individuals.

The process was interrupted last week when a senior counsel whose name was among those recommended to the Government by the advisory board withdrew his candidacy.

The barrister said his decision related to work commitments and was not due to cuts to judicial salaries, which was cited as the reason for a similar last-minute withdrawal last year.

The senior counsel's decision prompted the board, on the advice of Attorney General Máire Whelan, to reconvene last Friday to ensure the withdrawal did not present any technical obstacles to the nomination process.

Pressure has been mounting on the Government to move quickly on the nominations.

Earlier this month, the president of the High Court, Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns, said he was struggling to find judges for new cases due to the delay in filling the seven vacancies on his court. He said the delay left little time for training and induction for new arrivals and that forward planning in the High Court stopped at the end of October, as judges who were about to move to the Court of Appeal could not be assigned to long cases.

Mr Justice Brian McGovern said yesterday the delay meant there were no judges available to hear cases in the Commercial Court this week, the first time that has happened in the court’s ten-year history.

The advisory board, which includes judges, civil servants and representatives of the legal profession, was established in 1995 as a means of reducing the Government’s discretion over the selection of judges. It receives applications for judicial posts and sends the Minister for Justice a list of recommended candidates. The Government is not obliged to choose from that list, although it usually does.

The unprecedented changes to the High Court, which will have a fifth of its judges replaced in one day, are part of a sequence of events linked to the formal establishment of the Court of Appeal, a new institution designed to ease the four- year backlog of cases at the Supreme Court and allow that court to focus on cases of exceptional public importance. A referendum on the creation of the new court was passed with 65 per cent support last year.

Government officials are anxious to enact the legislation that will establish the Court of Appeal next week, allowing President Michael D Higgins to formally appoint the incoming judges before he travels to Africa next month.