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

It is important to recall that one can only become a judge in Ireland if one is a practising barrister or solicitor. There is very good reason for that. One has to have, I think, 12 years experience for the superior courts in order to be appointed as a judge. It is a job of expertise that requires legal knowledge and experience of the courts. Around the world now, there are jobs that everyone thinks they can do. This is a job which requires an expert level of knowledge in law. The purpose behind the section in respect of Deputy Daly's amendment is that one person on the commission is going to be nominated by the Law Society and one is going to be nominated by the Bar Council.

This provision exists in respect of the Judicial Appointments Advisory Board. In general, what happens is that the chairman of the Bar Council sits on the Judicial Appointments Advisory Board. It is democratic because there are about 2,000 barristers in the country. They all have a vote every year to elect a Bar Council of 20 people, which body then elects a chairperson. It is democratic in terms of being representative of the barristers' profession. It is similar in the Law Society. I am not sure how they do it but I think it is the president of the Law Society who sits on the Judicial Appointments Advisory Board and he or she has to be elected as well.

There is one area in which there may be a bit of unfairness in terms of who can be appointed. One can be a practising solicitor in-house and be appointed as a judge but, in order to be appointed as a practising barrister, one has to be a member of the Law Library. Maybe that is something the Minister should look at in the future in order to equate those sides, so that there could be an in-house solicitor and an in-house barrister.

If we had a situation in which the Public Appointments Service put ads in the paper for a barrister to sit on the Judicial Appointments Commission, my view is that most of the people who would apply might not be, I will put it politely, the best candidates.