Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

There are very serious amendments under consideration here and there are some attempts to row back on some of the important improvements made to the Bill on Committee Stage, which is regrettable. Other amendments are just a matter of tidying up, and we agree with a chunk of stuff. With the big ones, however, why go to all the trouble of setting up a commission, giving it the power, and then keeping the power with Government absolutely and utterly to disregard that?

The Government has put up weak arguments such as the unconstitutionality of it. Everybody accepts that the commission would make recommendations to the Government, the Commission would decide and then the President would appoint. The power to advise the President would still remain with Government. If the Minister says that our amendment, requiring that the Government be restricted in its options to "only" those people whom the judicial appointments commission recommends, is unconstitutional, then I put it to the Minister that so too are section 5 of the Court (Supplemental Provisions) Act 1961 and section 11 of the Court of Appeal Act 2014. I have not heard anything to the contrary in this regard. If the Government insists that our amendment No. 92 is unconstitutional, I would nearly be tempted to take a Supreme Court challenge on one or both of these issues on the basis that I would like to be a judge. If the Government is putting in restrictions on who can be a judge and with what qualifications, there is no impediment to the Members of the Oireachtas putting in other qualifications.

In order to give meaningful status to the commission, we debated at length who its members should be, what skill sets they should have, and what groups and diversities in society they should represent. We did all of that to reduce political interference, yet now we are coming up with a proposal that will allow the Government to do whatever it likes. Our amendments would be a better way of depoliticising the appointment process and providing broad expertise.

See this speech in context