Jim O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay South, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 1:

In page 8, to delete line 7.

The amendment proposes the deletion of the definition of the "Director" of the office of the judicial appointments commission. The purpose behind all of these grouped amendments is to try to change the proposed legislation, which has within it a proposed mechanism which will have an office of the judicial appointments commission and, within that office, a director and with the office able to retain staff, hire people and, in effect, become a large, expensive quango. The reason I say it is going to become large expensive quango is that, in the Explanatory Memorandum prepared by the Minister and given to the Dáil on Second Stage, the last paragraph stated that the estimated costs of the office of the judicial appointments commission would be €1 million per annum. When that is compared to the current costs for the Judicial Appointments Advisory Board, JAAB, which does the same work, the costs of the JAAB last year were less than €5,000 - a journalist put down a question and got an answer of a figure something over €4,000.

The work that is going to be performed by this new commission is, in substance, no different from the work that has to date been performed by the JAAB and the workload is not considerable. The function of this new body is to recommend persons it believes are suitable for appointment to judicial office. I went back and had a look at the reports of the JAAB for the last number of years. The job of the board in 2016 was to consider people for eight positions on the Judiciary - one on the Court of Appeal, two on the High Court, one on the Circuit Court and four on the District Court. That is the job it had - to recommend to the Government persons for eight positions. It is not something for which we need to set up an office that is going to cost us €1 million a year. It is not a job that requires us to have a director in place who is going to be paid a big salary and who will appear on Sunday morning radio programmes as the director of the office of the judicial appointments commission.

We do not need to go through the tortuous process of setting up this quango. Therefore, the proposal I have in amendment No. 1 is that we will get rid of this office of director because we do not need it. At present, the JAAB does its job perfectly well with a secretary - a Mr. Ryan - who performs the function and convenes the meetings. The board meets three or four times a year to consider applications and make its recommendations. In 2015 the JAAB report revealed there were 11 appointments in that year and, on average, we are talking about ten, 11 or 12 appointments each year that need to be advised upon by this new body. I think it an excessive waste of money and waste of time to set up this large structure which will have an office, a director and staff. The purpose of amendment No. 1 is to remove "Director" from the definitions.

Amendment No. 7 seeks to remove the definition of "Office" from section 2. Amendment No. 10 seeks to insert a new position into the definitions section, where, instead of having a director, let us do what we have under the JAAB and have a secretary to the commission. Amendment No. 96 is a similar amendment, which proposes to change the reference to "Director" to "Secretary", and amendment No. 97 seeks the same. In amendment No. 100, I seek to delete “Director, a member of staff of the Office” and substitute “Secretary”, and I seek the same in amendment No. 103. Amendment No. 109 again seeks to refer to the secretary of the commission as opposed to the director, and the same applies to amendments Nos. 110 to 112, inclusive. Amendment No. 113 seeks to insert, "The Secretary shall be responsible to the Commission for the performance of his or her functions".

Amendment No. 180 seeks to delete lines 25 and 26 of page 39 which refer to the review of a procedures committee. One of the things it is required to do is monitor "the effectiveness of the administrative support provided by the Office to the Commission". We do not need administrative support provided by an office of a commission whose job is to make recommendations in respect of ten to 15 positions each year. Amendment No. 184 refers to lines 8 to 10 of page 40. Again, similar to the previous amendment, this seeks to remove the requirement to ensure the effectiveness of the administrative support provided by the office of the commission. The final amendment, amendment No. 191, has the effect of seeking to remove from the Long Title to the Bill the reference to it setting up an office of a judicial appointments commission.

Irrespective of the differences people may have about how this body should be constituted, the last thing anyone wants to do is set up an unnecessary statutory body that is going to be staffed by more people than it is recommending for positions each year. We do not need a huge office, we do not need a director, we do not need glossy publications and we do not need anyone appearing in the media with the introduction, "Here we are joined today by the director of the office of the judicial appointments commission", and giving his or her views on the Sunday newspapers. We are just creating an unnecessary mini-empire. The JAAB does the job for less than €5,000 a year. Why set up this body that is going to cost €1 million? We should give it to trained judges. I am sorry for going on but there are a lot of amendments.