Willie Penrose (Longford-Westmeath, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I warmly welcome this Bill and I have no hesitation in offering Labour Party support for its passage into law. I commend my colleague, Deputy O'Callaghan, for doing a fine job in publishing this comprehensive Bill. It is sensible, constructive and balanced. The Government has no credible excuse to delay its implementation. It can clearly be improved upon and various amendments from all parties could be incorporated on Committee Stage. Therefore, the Government should get on with it.

In that respect, it contrasts sharply with the proposals published by the then Deputy and now Minister, Deputy Shane Ross, in 2013. I am glad he is here because I have a few words to say to him. The Minister wanted a judicial appointments council to recommend suitably qualified candidates on merit. He wanted a joint committee of the Houses of the Oireachtas to consider the recommendations and then nominate judges for appointment by the President. However, bizarrely, he wanted our Constitution amended to stipulate that no judge or practicing lawyer could have any role at all in assessing the qualifications of the candidates or in recommending their suitability. He said that the Constitution should also be amended to require that the Oireachtas joint committee that made these nominations had to have a permanent Opposition majority. In other words, according to the Minister, Deputy Ross, if one wants to have a role in selecting the judges, one should either know nothing at all about either the law or lawyers, or one should lose the general election and be in Opposition.

This is daftness on stilts. It is so manifestly absurd that I do not understand how its author can be taken seriously as either a political commentator or a practicing politician, let alone a Government Minister. The Minister's gadfly pesterings clearly entertained a readership in the leafy suburbs, but he has contributed nothing serious to this debate. In Opposition he was a noisy distraction. In Government he has become an empty space.

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