Niall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The first person might not take the job. There are plenty of reasons for such a ranking process. I am just pointing to the hypocrisy. What has the Government got against the Chief Justice who is an independent and reputable person and officeholder in this country?

Were the President to become incapacitated, under the Constitution, the Chief Justice would form one of the backfills, so to speak, for that vacancy in a temporary capacity, yet the Government and the Minister, Deputy Shane Ross, believe the Chief Justice should be relegated in that process, which is very worrying. If he has not already done so, the Minister might explain the reason the Government has moved away from the Chief Justice in that regard.

There is no doubt that the Minister is establishing a quango. Truth be told, the Judicial Appointments Advisory Board sits neatly as a sub-set of the Courts Service. When the Taoiseach sat on this side of the House, I recall him making a campaign out of the need to cull quangos. That is a fair criticism. I cannot recall the exact numbers he cited at the time, but he and his party were going to do the devil and all to deal with what he described as the proliferation of quangos, yet here we are establishing another quango.

The controversy about the appointment of the former Attorney General to the Court of Appeal was not properly explained to any of us. The Minister should take the opportunity to do so. Why did the former Attorney General not excuse herself from the process? Why did she not apply in the normal fashion, as provided for under the existing legislation, to the Judicial Appointments Advisory Board and be approved for appointment were she to meet the criteria? Apart from assessing candidates' suitability and qualifications, the Judicial Appointments Advisory Board assesses other issues such as tax compliance, for example. Anybody who applies to the board must be able to furnish proof of tax compliance, including up-to-date tax clearance certificates. Was any of that background checking done as part of the appointment process? That is a fair question and I do not mean it to be personal. The appointment was discussed, but that aspect did not arise.

The appointment of the lay people who are to sit on the judicial commission represents the major difference between us and the Government. We have made the point that non-medics would not be appointed to select medics. People with qualifications, experience and a background in the area are needed to do this. In terms of the backgrounds of the persons who should sit on the commission, the Bill Deputy Jim O'Callaghan brought forward was the right way forward. Incidentally, the Legal Services Regulation Bill which was passed by the previous Dáil drew from the same complement of persons in terms of people who were considered competent in the area of law, justice and advocacy matters. I do not understand why the Minister will not consider people from the Bar Council, the Law Society, the Citizens Information Board, the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, the Human Rights and Equality Commission and the free legal advice centres, FLAC. That is something he has to take on board because we cannot have a situation where people who know nothing about the operation of the law or the criminal justice system are sitting on the commission.

There is something else we should bear in mind. Who will choose the people in question? Ultimately, they will be politically appointed, which gives the lie to the way the Minister is trying to remove political influence from the process.

To return to my point about the backgrounds from which people who will sit on the commission should come, it was very clever of Deputy Jim O'Callaghan to outline in his Bill the calibre of person who should be appointed as a judge. He referenced integrity, independence of mind, moral courage, a high level of intellectual skill, sound temperament, common sense, impartiality, objectivity, fairness and equanimity. He rightly pointed out that not everybody would possess all of these skills, but what he outlined would go a long way towards dealing with the criteria.

The point my colleague, Deputy Jim O'Callaghan, and my party leader have made on a number of occasions represents the right position to take from our point of view, namely, that this new quango that the Minister is proposing, with its lay majority appointed through a political process, will not achieve what the Minister has set out to achieve in removing what he calls political influence from the process. We all recognise that is the Government's choice, but if in the future Fianna Fáil believes it is not working, we are indicating our right to change the legislation if we find ourselves on the Minister's side of the House. That is something with which I agree.

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