Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 41:

In page 14, line 11, to delete “section 16” and substitute “section 15”.

The whole group of amendments is around removing the power to nominate the legal members of the commission from the Bar Council and the Law Society. Of all the nominating bodies proposed either by the Government or by Deputy O'Callaghan in his Bill, I have the most concern about the Law Society and the Bar Council, partly because the fear would be that whoever is in, as it were, would get the nod for the position. I raise this in the context that we know senior members of the Law Society have had questions raised in the High Court regarding their probity and indeed the nominations to the Legal Services Regulatory Authority by the Bar Council have also often been questioned. In order to assist diversity and so on, I would like to remove that power from them and have them nominated in the same way as the other lay members, meaning they would go before the Public Appointments Service, PAS.