Shane Ross (Dublin South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I suggest the Minister tell whoever wrote the script that he or she should read the legislation before he or she write his speeches and that he check before he comes to the House to preach this sort of ignorant stuff. He should have taken the Bill a great deal more seriously and not come in and mouth the words of somebody else who wrote his script. The Bill is about cronyism. It is about the Minister of State's party and how it is behaving. I will give an example, but I will not name anybody because I do not wish to do this. I am not falling for any of the traps the Minister of State has been setting about naming a judgment which has been affected by political interference. I cannot prove this, as I said initially and I will not be able to prove it.

There was an appointment to the District Court in 2011 of a person who may be very good and I suspect he is very good. However, he happened to be a trustee of Fine Gael, a running mate of the Taoiseach in four elections; he had been a Senator under former Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald. He had also been on the list for jobs for many years under Fianna Fáil. That tells me one thing about the system: that Fine Gael is as bad as its predecessors. It waited its turn and now it is rewarding the guys who have waited their turn. To come to the House with this tissue of legal detail which does not address the problem is insulting. I am trying to ensure two things - I am happy for this to be adapted in any way if it takes the process away from the power of people such as the Minister of State and the Cabinet: that judges will be appointed on merit and that they will be independent. I see the Minister of State and his senior Cabinet colleagues putting up a smoke screen. They are trying to defend the system as it has always been and I am disgusted that they are adopting such a blunt and insulting attitude.

I know what will happen. The Government will very shortly, maybe in a year or two, introduce a Bill which will be camouflage. It stands behind the rotten JAAB system. It is defending the justice system and refusing to reform it. It is doing exactly the same as what it has been doing with the Garda Commissioner and on other issues which have been raised in the House recently. It is a source of great disappointment to me but utterly revealing that the Minister of State is refusing point blank to reform the system. The contributions from Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin put the Minister of State to shame. He is intent on protecting political patronage in a way which six months ago he personally would not have done and against which several years ago Fine Gael and the Labour Party were preaching.

The Minister of State and his colleagues should hang their heads in shame that they are not prepared to tackle this problem. The reaction the Minister of State has put forward in this House today is disgraceful.

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