O'Higgins `misgivings'

The former chief justice, Mr Tom O'Higgins, has said he has "very strong misgivings" about the holding of a referendum on judicial accountability. And if such a procedure was desired it could be done by ordinary law.

Speaking on RTE news in an interview with its legal affairs correspondent, Mary Wilson, he said he felt that if there was a referendum it should still take a two-thirds majority of either of the Houses of the Oireachtas to remove a member of the judiciary.

As to views that requiring such a large majority made the removal of a judge too difficult he responded "So what?"

He could well understand the good faith of the Minister for Justice in bringing forward his proposals, he said.

"He means well, but I think a little bit of long thinking ought to go into the whole proposal," he said.

"Remember this, under the Irish Constitution personal rights, the ordinary liberties of the citizen, depend entirely on the integrity and independence of the judges." Asked whether he felt more accountability was necessary where judges were concerned, he said he was never certain what the term "accountability" meant.

But he continued: "We are a free society. I don't see what the problem is at the moment. If anyone wants to make a complaint against a judge, if it's taken seriously, then some method will be found for dealing with it. Isn't that what the Sheedy affair was about?

"It was a complaint made, as I recall, initially in the Dail, regarded as serious and then translated in the way it in fact was dealt with by the presidents of the different courts."

Not wishing, he said, to enter into the current political sphere on the matter, where strong views had been expressed on both sides, "maybe from the din of controversy something good can occur".