Mr. Kevin Condon:

At a quick look, in some ways, the scheme is quite similar to the 2017 Bill but there are significant differences. Members might recall when that Bill was last in the Seanad in December 2019, 59 amendments had to be tabled to get the document right because there were quite a number of inconsistencies in it and so forth.

Clearly, the biggest difference at this point between the Bill that was drawn from this scheme and the old Bill is the composition of the commission and the change to the Chief Justice's chair. It does not have a lay majority, which was proposed the last time around. It introduces the Judicial Council as a source of nominees into the Judicial Appointments Commission. That change alone to the Chief Justice chairing means there are a network of consequential amendments in the Bill, which would probably be a bit too detailed to go into. They are there, however. A lot of change is required.

On top of that, we have been looking at a number of other issues. I believe I am free to say that since the scheme was passed, like any drafting process, a number of things were required to be fleshed out. Members will probably see some new technical amendments, for example, relating to data processing, and one or two things we were just not seeing in the scheme or that were not in the 2017 Bill. I believe that when the Bill is published, it will probably look substantially different to the 2017 Bill.