Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

These are incredibly difficult and confusing. There are aspects of amendments that could be supported but they have a knock-on effect for other parts of the legislation, which makes it very difficult for us in handling them. As I said in a previous discussion, this is an area we actively examined in preparation of our amendments. It is the idea of getting rid of all the relevant committees. There is a very compelling argument for that, not least of which is the idea of having a commission of 13 people and a plethora of committees made up of 11 people. That sort of goes against the grain of the establishment of the commission in the first place. It is still unwieldy, even with a few people taken out, but most of the people on the committees would be on the other body. Are we not better off just leaving it at the commission itself? It is quite a compelling argument.

We wanted to hear the discussion and I am not sure the reasons we did not put down specific amendments stand up. There may be other ways of achieving the goal that we cannot do in the course of these amendments. I suppose we decided against proposing getting rid of them because the Bill, as currently constituted, precisely excludes the presidents of the District Court and Circuit Court from membership. There are committees that allow them to come in through an elegant way to be part of the process under the headline of an additional member. That is without making the commission so big by adding them on. That is too messy, although I know it is the logic behind the process. I would like the involvement of the two presidents and I note Deputy O'Callaghan provides for that. If he is providing for extra lay people etc., we could suddenly be talking about 17 people, which is too big.

This comes back to the idea of the lay majority and how important it is. In some ways, it is kind of a matter of preference. That said, I still like the idea of a lay majority. We made the point before that focusing really gets away from what we should be looking at, which is who gets appointed as a judge, rather than necessarily how such people get appointed. I echo very much the points made by Deputy Wallace earlier that we are talking about a lay majority but the criteria for those lay people is really such that in a different way they will replicate certain sections of Irish society that are already over-represented. The points about the Civil Service are not meant to be derogatory in any way but many of these State bodies tend to have people from those types of backgrounds. In many ways they are as institutionalised, if not more, than the Judiciary or the legal profession. Would we get a diverse balance and would it really be a lay representation? It is more of the same.

The Judiciary should not be a career progression for people in the legal profession as such. We should not have a position where judges are a class apart but they are. If there was a different way we could get representation for the presidents of the District Court and Circuit Court to become involved in the commission, I would be open to considering it. It is not a strong enough reason to maintain the relevant committees. They will create mayhem. The legislation will be made chaotic by having these multiple committees with 11 people when there is a commission of 13 people. It will not work. I will have to do some work on this to bring about a different way for the presidents of the District Court and Circuit Court to have a role in this process without relevant committees. They are a really cumbersome way of trying to get over that point and they will not work. I am strongly against them but we must find a different way of getting the other two involved in the process. Those are my initial thoughts.