Michael McDowell (Independent)
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I thank the witnesses for their presentations, which I found very interesting. One problem that I have with the scheme of the Bill that is now before us is, curiously, one which caused a problem with the previous Bill, that is the membership of the commission. It seems to be a body corporate consisting of nine people, but one of those nine people is a kind of rotational person. I cannot follow exactly how this is supposed to work. Perhaps I am missing something and somebody else understands this better than I do. I refer to the second item, which is a court president, if it depends on what appointment is being made as to whether one is on the commission, does the commission have any continuing existence if it is appointing a procedures committee and preparing its annual general report? There seems to be a lacuna there which I cannot quite follow. The committee should signal that to the Department.

It is a strange corporate body that has a rotational person depending on one aspect of the commission's business, which is simply the appointment to a particular court on a particular day.

I am concerned about the whole notion of the Judiciary selecting a tame barrister and a tame solicitor for a three-year term. The legal professions deserve some standing in this. This is not a trade union point of view. It is simply that the members of the professions have representative bodies and a chairperson or president of that body.

It seems odd that this can be completely sidelined and the Judiciary can select a solicitor for three years, say that is it and it does not want any further input from the Law Society of Ireland. It has selected Joe or Josephine Bloggs from McCann Fitzgerald and that is the input from the solicitors' profession. Likewise, it selects some barrister who it favours, or thinks is wise or unwise or house-trained or whatever, and that is the entire input or insight from the profession that one of its members has been selected by the Judiciary.

Perhaps Dr. Cahillane, Dr. Kenny and others will come in on this. Is that normal or is this something new that is being brought in? If one wants the professions to have faith in the whole system, I cannot see why it is the case that the Judiciary chooses which member of each body has a function. The first question I pose is about this rotational issue, which I believe is a bit strange, and then the appointment of a barrister and solicitor by the Judiciary for three years, which is strange.

I then come to the question of interviews. One of the things during - we will not call it a filibuster - the detailed investigation of the previous Bill was this whole question of interviewing sitting judges. What questions will the commission put to them? Will it ask how judges decide cases? Will it ask if they are even-tempered and what their general attitude is, or whether they are liberal or conservative?

What questions can be put to a High Court judge by an interview process that are of any real assistance to a committee? Is it purely to find out if the person is pleasant or unpleasant or is it to find out how he or she has functioned as a judge? Is it to ask that person about the decisions they have made, or might be able to make, or his or her capacity to work with other people? I find the whole interview process at the higher level a little bit problematic.

I will make a point that is missed by some people. Once a person is appointed as a High Court judge, however he or she got there, be that person a barrister or a solicitor, he or she is entitled to serve on the Supreme Court when asked by the Chief Justice. That person is entitled to serve on the Court of Appeal. He or she is eligible to act up and to serve on those bodies.

What is the purpose of an interview in this context? What kinds of questions could be asked? The independence of the Judiciary is lurking in the back of my mind. Are the laypeople on the commission going to ask whether Michael McDowell is a conservative on the pro-life issue and ask me questions to bring this out before I get onto the Court of Appeal? Is that what they are going to do? There is a real problem here. I will leave it at that.

Obviously, the two professional body witnesses have an interest in this selection of a tame barrister or tame solicitor. There is, however, this wider systemic issue of the composition of the commission and having a rotating person, and whether the commission is really a body corporate if its composition changes depending on the afternoon's business.

Supposing there are three vacancies in the District Court, four in the Circuit Court and one in the High Court, who is the commission at any given time? Head 9 seems to me to be very strange in the way it approaches that. I will start off by asking the two professional body witnesses what their attitude is to having one of their members selected.