Dr. Laura Cahillane:

I would have to commend the Government on the recent appointments. We are talking about gender balance and it was particularly well done. It is unfortunate that we have just gone through this major appointments process without looking at the appointments procedures themselves. The point I was making in my submission is that the current process we have for appointing our judges does nothing to ensure that we will have appropriate diversity. As I said, it is at the whim of the Government.

In my presentation I touched on a point concerning diversity. Perhaps we should examine the possibility of widening the pool and, as Dr. Kenny mentioned, looking at appointing academics as judges as well. It is something that is done in other jurisdictions. The argument against it here is that academics would not have the requisite experience of litigation in court procedure, but that is something that can easily be provided. It might be more relevant for appointments to the Supreme Court where one does have more theoretical questions. However, that is one way which would open up the pool in terms of diversity of backgrounds, gender and so on.