Colm Brophy (Dublin South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I object to what Deputy O'Callaghan outlined. There is a certain amount of wanting to create "Lanigan's Ball" out of this, with "I stepped out and she stepped in again". It is not feasible or reasonable that someone could step down from a post only to be reclassified immediately as a lay person and return in a different role.

To pick up on Deputy O'Callaghan's opening point, no one would call the Minister, Deputy Ross, a stockbroker. However, if he applied for a job the day after he left his current one, people would say that. The spirit of the proposal is to have a real lay involvement - not just Judiciary and ex-Judiciary cosily and collectively examining something, but to broaden the base far beyond that. There is an underlying idea in many of the objections to this proposal that the only people who have the expertise to do this job can only come from one section. For that reason, I disagree with Deputy O'Callaghan's amendments.