Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is correct that my amendment is contingent on other amendments. I will not go into all the arguments on that now, but the Minister is correct that we have a huge problem in the way in which the overall lay person representation is being administered by the PAS. The sort of criteria that is laid down is very much destined to pack the commission with senior civil servant types. They do not have the necessary diversity or skill sets. Particular types of skills such as commerce and finance have been mentioned. We have a number of amendments to change these criteria.

One of the ideas we have, upon which we are not too fixed as it was a little bit of a rush job to get the amendments in at the end, is for a mix of lay people to be considered. A change of criteria could be made around the lay people and some of the commission members could come from representative bodies, such as the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, ICCL, the Free Legal Advice Centres, FLAC and the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission. A split like this could be made. We will park that argument for now, even though it is linked, but we will make the argument strongly later on.

In the event that it was agreed that FLAC and the ICCL would be a representative or nominating body for a lay person, this amendment provides that those appointees would not be precluded from being deemed to be a lay person if they had a legal background, given that it is very likely that someone working in FLAC or the ICCL, for example, may have some type of a legal background. The amendment was a way for NGO nominations not to be prohibited because they had a legal background. It is open to change.

I had a certain sympathy for a number of the broader points made by the Minister in replying to Deputy O'Callaghan's amendments on barristers, solicitors and so on.