An analysis of the Judicial Council Act

The Judicial Council Act was finally published in July 2019, almost 20 years after it was first proposed. The origins of the proposal go back further still. In 1996, the Constitution Review Group had recommended amending Article 35 of the Constitution in order to provide for a Judicial Council which would regulate judicial conduct.1 The Fourth Progress Report of the All-Party Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution, published in 1999, also recommended the establishment of a council to regulate the conduct of judges, which would comprise judges, retired judges and also a lay element.2 Similar recommendations were made in further reports such as the Sixth Report of the Working Group on a Courts Commission (the Denham Report)3 and the Report of the Committee on Judicial Conduct and Ethics (the Keane Report).4 These two latter reports form the original basis of the Act. The Keane Report was a detailed response to the Denham Report and as a result, the Government brought forward a proposal which sought to amend the Constitution in order to establish a judicial council.5 That particular Bill was not well-drafted and consequently, the proposal was dropped.6 In 2007, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties produced a further report making similar recommendations7 and subsequently, draft legislation was prepared and a scheme of a bill was published to give effect to the Keane Report in August 2010. From 2011 to 2015 the Bill featured in successive iterations of the Government’s Legislative Programme and while it appeared to drop off the radar in 2016,8 the Bill was finally initiated in 2017. Today’s Act is the final product of that journey.