Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Would the Minister not be concerned? We are left with this gaping hole in that we do not even know how the nomination came about. It is clear that I will not get an answer to my question. I do not want to stray into the issue of qualifications but the Minister referred to the person being eminently qualified. Would the fact that the person in question does not have any experience as a trial judge not be a point of concern? Does the Minister accept that among the legal profession and Judiciary there was a view that a precedent had been set, albeit relatively recently given that the Court of Appeal is a relatively new court, in that no non-High Court judge had been appointed to a the Court of Appeal previously? Does he accept, therefore, that there was a presumption among potential applicants that the role would be filled by a High Court judge and that this was a reasonable expectation considering it had always been the case, even if the court is relatively new? Would that not be a fair assumption to make? Would this presumption and the particular nature of the job not have stayed the hand of people who would otherwise have been interested in applying for the position? They will have assumed the only people who would be appointed to the court would be High Court judges.