Interpreters in court pay row - Times Online

Lionbridge, the company contracted by the Courts Service to translate for defendants and witnesses who don’t speak English, is paid €46 per hour by the Courts Service for providing interpreters. This gives it €21 per hour while the interpreter takes home €25.

About 1,200 interpreters are employed to cover 175 languages.

The quality of some Lionbridge interpreters has been criticised by judges.

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This multi-cultural lark is a cottage industry.

I wonder how many people it employs in total.

Race to the bottom (that is, for the lower classes).

Notice how reducing judges' salaries from €250k to €180k is unheard of.

Oh wait, wouldn't a change to deeply ingrained laws be required for that?

So, this company is, essentially, the interpreters' pimp?

A salary of a judge cannot be reduced under the constitution. Offices like those of judges and the president cannot have their salaries cut, with good reason. They often have to do things (rule on the constitutionality of Acts, refer Bills, reach judgements, etc) that would seriously piiss off the government. The fear is that to intimidate them, the government would simply threaten any judge or president who annoyed them with a cut in salary.

There is ample evidence that that would happen if governments could get away with it. A past government tried to intimidate an independent-minded Ombudsman by reducing the staffing provided. It has recently done the same with the Equality Authority, imposing cuts that effectively prevented the authority from doing its job, because its job annoyed some ministers. (The excuse about the state finances was lame. A 43% cut was way over the top, and only designed to silence the body. Whether you agree with the body or not, if the government wants to axe it they should have the honesty to do it openly, not sneakily put in place cuts larger than experienced by any other body, purely as part of an act of political revenge.)

Judges and the president are given two protections:
- they can only be removed by the Oireachtas, not the government.
- their salaries cannot be cut.

They are vital protections that exist in most democracies.

True, but that is when you are referring to cuts specifically aimed only at judges (like the recent and widely undereported specific cut of 12.5% for junior doctors) or departments.

What about cuts shared amongst all sttae employees like the 1% Income Tax levy and 7.5% Pension levy? Those are not specifically aimed at judges so can't be compared to cuts aimed at departments of state services? These state-wide cuts are for hundreds of thousands of people. Surely if it's shared equally - from taoiseach, to ministers, judges, doctors, consultants, firemen, gardai, nurses, etc., it's not unconsitutional? The judge is still in the same relative financial position as before and hasn't been intimidated to any higher degree than anyone else?

The notion that judges' salaries cannot be reduced has been refuted, on many occasions, by UCC law professor David Gwynn Morgan .

The government is within its rights to introduce a pension levy on the salaries of the judiciary. After all, which one of them, in their right mind, would object - or mount a legal challenge?

Pensions levy and the judiciary - The Irish Times - Wed, Mar 18, 2009

Why is the State paying for any interpreters? If people cannot speak or understand English, they should not be in the country?

A lucid and intelligent argument. After all, everyone knows they do speech and language checks at customs.

I'm guessing you probably don't travel much Gelnnshane. That's probably a good thing.

If the judges can not challenge that levy or taxations in accordance to the statute and the precedence case of the widow of a court judge therein, well with my jurisprudence i think something must be wrong or the difference is been sort elsewhere to fill such a hole given their salaries and what they use to get with their current stardard of living i think.

I will also suggest that, the court service should stop recruiting interpreters rather go for a trained solicitor or barrister from those countries that will actually takes up those cases and interprete for the accuse person concerned. good morning.

You missed my point. A targeted salary reduction is not possible. But charges on one's salary, such as the levy, are, once they are not based on one's status as a judge, but one's status as a state employee. The reduction principle is also based on gross, not net. Put simply, saying 'We will reduce judges' salaries by 10%' is constitutionally impossible. Arguably, saying 'we will reduce a broad group of public service salaries by 10%, and judges happen to feature in that group', is. Similarly increasing the tax rate can apply to judges. Creating a special tax rate targeted at judges is not.