Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is trying to undo what we attempted to achieve on Committee Stage. That is contrary to the requirement for transparency. The programme for Government committed to reforming the judicial appointments process to ensure it was transparent, fair and credible, but this proposal breaks with that commitment. According to the 2010 Council of Europe recommendation, any body being set up was to ensure that the widest possible representation was engaged, procedures should be transparent, reasons for decisions should be made available to applicants on request, and steps should be taken to establish, where lacking, procedures for the selection, appointment and promotion of judges that were, using objective criteria, transparent. We are moving away from that. If the Minister has a defence, I would like to hear it.

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