Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Those things will not change. They are in the Constitution. This legislation is about the process by which three names are put to the Government. The judicial appointments will put three names to the Government. From those three names, the Government will choose a judge. The legislation will also prevent canvassing. It will require that merit be the criterion for the appointment of judges. The judicial appointments commission will have a lay majority and a lay chairperson and everyone applying for appointment will have to apply to it, including sitting judges seeking promotion. Having a lay chairperson is not unusual and is the case in England and Scotland, where there is an equal number of legal and lay members. It is also the modern way by which people are appointed to senior positions in public office. If one takes the example of Secretaries General, who are the most senior people in Departments, while it may have been different in the past, in recent years they have been selected through the top level appointments committee, TLAC, which is not chaired by a civil servant and the majority of members of which are not civil servants.

In the old days, civil servants may have selected Secretaries General from among themselves. In the modern world of selecting people to appointments, it does not happen that way. If, for example, in the private sector, a new CEO is being appointed to a company, that appointment is not made by a committee of CEOs. The board of the company will usually set up a sub-committee and non-executive directors, who are often in a majority, will select the new CEO. When hospital consultants, for example, brain surgeons, cardiac surgeons and geriatricians, are selected in HSE hospitals, the chairman of the interview board comes from the Public Appointments Service and is not a doctor. It may be different in voluntary hospitals. These reforms are really bringing us into the modern world by providing transparency, greater independence and having more lay people involved in selecting people for key public office.

See this speech in context