Mr. James Cahill:

The director general and I are very pleased to attend this event. The necessity to introduce a reformed process for judicial selection becomes more urgent with each passing year. Our recent submission is the third we have made. The others were made in 2014 and 2017. I wish to highlight five areas which require further careful consideration during the drafting process. They are: membership of the commission; the procedures committee; merit, gender and diversity; legal academics; and miscellaneous matters.

We make a number of points regarding membership of the commission. The 2016 Bill provided that "a practising solicitor nominated by the President for the time being of the Law Society of Ireland" would be a member of the commission. The provision has not been retained in the general scheme. It is critically important that a representative from each branch of the profession is appointed to the commission. The general scheme provides that the Attorney General will participate in the commission as a non-voting member. The society's long-held view is that it is not appropriate that the Attorney General would have a dual function in the process, both at the commission and the Cabinet table. The reasons for this are listed in our submission.

The society cautioned against creating a commission which was top-heavy in terms of senior members of the Judiciary, at the expense of judicial representatives of the courts of local and limited jurisdiction. We continue to believe that balance among the judicial membership of the commission is crucial. However, the scheme provides that a Judicial Council nominee will chair the commission in the absence of the Chief Justice. The chair of the procedures committee will be the Chief Justice or his or her nominee. In any other committee which is formed to assist the commission or the procedures committee, the chair will be the Chief Justice or a nominee determined by the Chief Justice. These substantial responsibilities raise a question as to whether the Judicial Council nominees are more likely to be senior, long-standing members of the Judiciary. If so, their experience of legal practice - as court users rather than as members of the Judiciary - will be at a considerable remove from their present-day experience. I reiterate that the Law Society welcomes the participation of lay members on the commission in the manner proposed by the general scheme.

The procedures committee will be the engine room of the process. Our previous submissions advocated for more formal evaluation procedures in the consideration of judicial appointments. We believe that is necessary to streamline and aid transparency in the process and, as such, the creation of a procedures committee to perform prescribed functions is welcome. The question has been raised whether sufficient detail has been provided under heads 55 to 60 to deliver that transparency. Transparency has been the subject of debate.

The credibility of the commission will be greatly enhanced by a solid start. At the outset, we suggested that the commission conduct a detailed analysis of international best practice in judicial appointments so that the best elements of other systems can be considered in an Irish context. It will also be critically important to ensure that sufficient expertise is available to the procedures committee to enable it to draft and deliver to the commission comprehensive "Statements of Procedures" and "Statements of Relevant Skills and Attributes" for each class of court business and every area of law. The expanse of that task cannot be underestimated.

We believe the commission should carefully reflect on the range of skills it wishes to consider as contributing to the concept of "merit" in recommending persons for appointment. It should also consider the European Commission's extensive work on judicial training and education in EU law as well as the Law Society's work on gender equality, diversity and inclusion in the Irish legal system.

As regards diversity between the branches of the profession, we have proposed that a comparable approach should be taken in order to increase the number of solicitors being appointed to judicial office. There is the potential to provide greater diversity in eligible candidates for judicial appointment. However, head 38 could be widened to increase the pool of legal academics who are eligible, which, in itself, has potential to achieve greater diversity among the members of the Judiciary. We consider that the requirement for legal academics to have 12 years' standing and to have practised for at least four years is at odds with the general thrust of the scheme, which is to make judicial appointments on merit. We propose removing the four-year threshold and propose that an academic will be deemed to be appropriately qualified where, at the time of such appointment, they are a legal academic of 12 years standing, or then just a solicitor or barrister within the meaning of the Legal Services Regulation Act 2015.

A further point relates to confidentiality and the conditions to be satisfied in recommending names to the Minister. I wish to also highlight the issue of judicial references. On that, I would simply say that the practice of submitting references from sitting or previous members of the Judiciary as part of the application process should cease.

We welcome the legislation. Judicial appointments are, of course, a vital component of the proper administration of justice in the State and we look forward to today's debate. I thank the members for their time and attention.