Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

We put in hours in trying to improve the Minister's Bill. He has now come up with hare-brained arguments around unconstitutionality that were never made on Committee Stage. The Minister has said that he is reinstating the President of the Circuit Court and the President of the District Court, but he is wrong about that because it was everyone of us who argued for the presidents of the Circuit Court and the District Court to be members of this commission. In the original Bill the Government left them out and now we have this convoluted committee to try to get them in through the back door. That was the Government's mess, which it is now trying to reinstate. Members in this House tried to do this on Committee Stage in a better way, so the Minister's assertion and the argument about unconstitutionality are absolute nonsense.

The Minister, Deputy Ross, has said there would be a lay majority on the commission. He said that whatever happens from now on, it would be a lay majority, independent of political interference. This is nonsense. In fact, the Government's amendments to reinstate the Attorney General to the commission enshrine political interference and bring it back to the commission and to the final selection stage, because the final stage of judicial appointments will continue to rest with the Government. The idea that this proposed legislation will break the link between political appointments and that it will herald in a new dawn is utter nonsense. A lay person can be just as much a political appointee as a judge or can have political views. We are trying to reform the whole system and the manner in which this has been handled, and some of the commentary so far, has been disgraceful and an abuse of an important function.

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