Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 115:

In page 26, to delete lines 15 to 26 and substitute the following:“(3) Subsection (1) shall only apply to a legal academic who has qualified as a barrister or solicitor and subsequent subsections of this section, in so far as they relate to a person who is referred to in them as a ‘head of a faculty’ or ‘head of another faculty’, shall not be construed as enabling such a person to be the subject of such an appointment unless the person has qualified as a barrister or solicitor.”.

This amendment refers to the new section which it is proposed to insert into the 1961 Act and which concerns persons who are entitled to be appointed to judicial office. The ostensible intention of the proposed new section is to make the process more open and flexible, but there is a difference between the provisions included in the Bill concerning legal academics potentially qualified to be judges and the heads of Bill, as published, which I seek to reintroduce. The distinction in the heads of the Bill is that someone who has practised as a solicitor or a barrister for four years and is a legal academic could be appointed a judge. The key part of the proposed new section, as worded, is subsection (3)(a) which states "who, at the time of the appointment referred to in that subsection, is a barrister or a solicitor". It requires a higher standard. Essentially, it require the person to be a barrister or a solicitor at the time of his or her potential appointment, a restriction which I do not think is necessary. It will restrict the desire to allow legal academics, even those who are qualified, to become judges to the point where the proposed new section is of no particular additional benefit. The amendment seeks to address this issue.