Helen McEntee says legal appointments Bill is sound but welcomes Supreme Court assessment

The Minister for Justice Helen McEntee has said she believes a Bill introducing a new system for appointing judges is constitutional but she welcomed the decision by President Michael D Higgins to refer it to the Supreme Court so its legality can be fully and comprehensively checked.

It is the first time President Higgins has made such a referral and he has identified 12 provisions of the Bill for special attention by the seven-judges of the Supreme Court.

They will hear arguments next month for and against the Judicial Appointments Commission Bill and while Ms McEntee said she believed the Bill was sound, she accepted that is was important it be assessed by the State’s highest court.

Ms McEntee said she had taken her “advice from the Attorney General. I have done that every step of the way but I welcome the fact that this has gone forward because I think it’s important at this stage where there are any questions hanging over that we make sure that we test this constitutionally.”

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On The Week In Politics she also addressed moves to increase the recruitment age limit for gardaí to 50.

“Nothing is off the table when it comes to recruitment and retention,” she said. “We’ve just had a budget where €172 million in additional funding was allocated to the Garda, that’s to allow for additional places next year, that’s to allow for the increase in training [and] to allow for extra overtime and investment in things like mental health wellbeing.”

She said while Garda recruitment remained an issue, “we’re starting to see the numbers stabilising and now move upwards”.

Sinn Féin’s Matt Carty criticised Fine Gael’s approach to policing for more than a decade and told the same programme that since the party “came to power 12 years ago there are less gardaí now, there are less Garda stations now and we have multiple reports of Garda morale being on the floor”.

He told the programme that steps taken by the Government have been “far too slow and far too minimal” and he accused the Minister for Justice of adopting a “hands-off approach and what we actually need is Government in order to resolve the issues”.

He highlighted multiple communities who say they are at risk and with gardaí repeatedly saying they are “undervalued”.