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

-----is frightening. I always would have great confidence were a committee to be set up to evaluate applications. If picking an electrician, for example, for a simple job, one would hardly expect that the committee would be chaired by a carpenter or a plumber. It would have someone with expertise in electrics. It is that simple. Members of the Judiciary have their own ways of communicating. The Chief Justice, the President of the Court of Appeal, Mr. Justice Sean Ryan, the President of the High Court, Mr. Justice Peter Kelly, the President of the Circuit Court, Mr. Justice Raymond Groarke, and the President of the District Court, Her Honour Judge Rosemary Horgan, communicate. In fairness, Deputy O'Callaghan's judicial appointments commission would have been recommending that there would be three individuals ranked for each judicial vacancy. It would be merit based and the number of recommendations would have been reduced from seven to three. These proposals are universally accepted and I support them. They were endorsed by the judicial appointments review committee that was established by the judges themselves. The judges want these changes. Therefore, let us work with them. We can put our own individual Oireachtas slants on them.

The Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Ross, does not seem to understand that, under the Constitution, the Government would still reserve the right to not accept any recommendation made pursuant to any Act. The Government is so empowered by the Constitution. I heard the Minister, Deputy Ross, saying yesterday that he had an agenda and that this is only a halfway house, but the Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Flanagan, cooled his ardour and his engines. If the Minister, Deputy Ross, wants to get what he really wants, he better go back to the people in a referendum. That is the only way he will get what he wants because those in government are the only people empowered by the Constitution to appoint judges. The Government still can reject everyone, but if it rejected someone under Deputy O'Callaghan's proposed Bill, it would have to say, "Penrose was not fit because he did not have expertise in commercial law", or whatever. That is fair enough. If I do not have it, I do not have it. However, it is clear that the Minister, Deputy Ross, does not understand that.

Deputy O'Callaghan's Bill would provide for a commission that had a well-thought-out mixture of competencies. As well as the Chief Justice and the presidents of the various courts referred to, there would be nominees from the Citizens Information Board, the Higher Education Authority, the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, the Free Legal Advice Centres, the Law Society and the Bar Council. There was also provision for gender balance on the commission. It was absolutely spot on. It got everything right. All of those people had various expertises. It was not necessarily legal expertise, but they were people of stature. The commission would also have had to have regard to the importance of promoting gender and cultural diversity and, the Leas-Cheann Comhairle will be glad to hear, ensuring that a sufficient number of judges were proficient in the Irish language. One of the facts is that a judicial career is often embarked upon after a career in practice, and I support this. That is a feature which enhances judicial independence. Our judges are not schooled before appointment. I think that is important.

On the salary package for judges, and I might conclude on this although it might not be the most attractive thing to say, it should be an attractive option for practitioners well into their 50s and early 60s to consider. The recent changes that were made-----

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