John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

As we know, given it is a point that has been made repeatedly, at the moment the Judicial Appointments Board does this quite effectively and efficiently. The commission will be a quango.

The other point that I presume is not lost on our Sinn Féin colleagues, who are not the only republicans in this House, although I do not want to go back over the ground Deputy Ó Snodaigh covered, is that regardless of what decision this quango of 20 people makes and recommends to the Government, the Government can still reject that and go ahead and make its own appointment to a particular position as judge. That point is sobering. The public are looking in and wondering what is going on, given we are going to appoint a commission of 17 people to nominate up to 20 people a year yet, even after recommendations are made by this commission, which is going to cost hundreds of thousands of euro a year to function and operate, the Government can simply reject those recommendations and go ahead and make the nominations, as it has been doing. Indeed, the Minister, Deputy Ross, has been quite happy to sit by while it has been happening in the past six to eight months and the Government has made its own nominations and appointments to the positions.

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