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Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality: EU Regulations and Directive on International Protection, Asylum and Migration: Discussion (Resumed) (30 Apr 2024)

Michael McDowell: ...transit zone; individuals who are brought ashore following a search and rescue operation at sea; individuals who are apprehended in connection with an unauthorised crossing of an external border by land, sea or air; and individuals who are apprehended within the territory of an EU Member State who eluded controls at the external borders at ... first instance. I ask the Department of...

Seanad: Special Measures in the Public Interest (Derrybrien Wind Farm) Bill 2023: Second Stage (20 Feb 2024)

Michael McDowell: ...in the circumstances that ESB, through a subsidiary company called Gort Windfarms Limited., took a lease of property in the mountains between counties Clare and Galway. It built a wind farm on the land it leased, with a considerable number of wind turbines and enough capacity to power 30,000 homes. As a result of the construction, it appears that a peat slide took place in a gully about...

Seanad: Special Measures in the Public Interest (Derrybrien Wind Farm) Bill 2023: Second Stage (20 Feb 2024)

Michael McDowell: ...as things stand. The Minister of State stated acceptance of this Bill would set a bad precedent. If he had said the Attorney General was advising the Government at the Cabinet meeting today that for Ireland to adopt the measures provided for in the Bill would be unconstitutional because it would breach European law and that nothing of this kind could be done under European law, I would...

Seanad: Special Measures in the Public Interest (Derrybrien Wind Farm) Bill 2023: First Stage (14 Dec 2023)

Michael McDowell: ...those offices or positions or that employment; to extinguish certain rights; to provide for the re-naming of Gort Wind Farms Limited; to provide for the transfer of the lessee’s interest in the lands at Derrybrien; to disapply certain provisions of the Companies Acts and other enactments in so far as they relate to Gort wind farms Limited; to provide for the preservation of...

Seanad: Vacant and Derelict Buildings: Motion [Private Members] (15 Nov 2023)

Michael McDowell: ...have to be growing out of them but they are needed for urban renewal. This is the point. If there is the vesting system in relation to derelict sites, that is one thing. However, if you have non-derelict land right beside a derelict site and proper planning would involve redeveloping the whole thing and giving a lease to a developer of the entire block, the mere fact that in the middle...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on European Union Affairs: Future Treaty Change in the European Union: Discussion (15 Nov 2023)

Michael McDowell: I will not take too much time here. The first thing we have to be pragmatic about is the political landscape internationally. The US and French elections are coming up. Who will be in power in Paris? It may well be that Le Pen will be the next President of France. There will obviously not be a reversal of Brexit, but the inclusion of David Cameron in cabinet suggests a consciousness at...

Seanad: Housing For All: Statements (7 Nov 2023)

Michael McDowell: .... I defy anybody in this Chamber to point to any provision of the Constitution that prevents the Irish Government from doing what is required, including in respect of the compulsory purchase of land, the valuation of land, property prices, land banks and all the rest of it. I am convinced, on the basis of going back to the Kenny report, that there is no constitutional reason the...

Seanad: Situation in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories: Statements (19 Oct 2023)

Michael McDowell: .... It is not the Palestinian people. It is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. It is dedicated to the reversal of the 1948 expulsions of Arabs and the reintegration of a single Palestinian land. Hamas is backed by Iran in all of this. What was done the other day was done with calculation. They knew full well when they murdered all of those innocent people at the music festival and...

Seanad: Situation in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories: Motion (18 Oct 2023)

Michael McDowell: ...barbarous, but as I said in The Irish Timestoday, it was all intended to bring this about. I am surprised that the western allies do not see the disaster that is unfolding and see that any further land invasion of Gaza will suffer from all the shortcomings I have just mentioned and raises profound questions for the future of that region and, indeed, for the future of world peace. This...

Seanad: Crime and Policing: Motion (27 Sep 2023)

Michael McDowell: .... I was surprised and disappointed to hear people saying that to protect this House from the kind of behaviour that we saw the other day somehow was to call for a diminution of constitutional rights. The basic law of this land says that access to this House is required, particularly for Members who are free from arrest in coming here. The general rule is that the Members of the...

Seanad: Situation in Israel and occupied Palestinian territory: Statements (12 Jul 2023)

Michael McDowell: ...the boundaries of the state of Israel. I regard the creeping annexation of the West Bank territories as illegal and manifestly illegal. I regard the establishment of settlements on Palestinian land as wholly contrary to international law. I support all of those people, many of whom are of the Jewish race themselves, who oppose the constant and apparently insatiable appetite of extreme...

Seanad: An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business (23 May 2023)

Michael McDowell: I am just making the point that they are illegal under the Noxious Weeds Act and that anybody who has them on his or her land is liable to be prosecuted.

Seanad: Courts and Civil Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2022: Second Stage (27 Apr 2023)

Michael McDowell: ...demolished. As Senator Wilson said, in the early 2000s I sold Shanganagh Prison for housing development. Eventually, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council acquired it and it was handed over to the Land Development Agency. The bones of 20 years later, they are turning the sod to build the first house there. We got €30 million for it. When we spent the €30 million we...

Seanad: Courts and Civil Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2022: Second Stage (27 Apr 2023)

Michael McDowell: ...up in Mountjoy Prison. Their lives are ruined forever. The time has come for the Department of Justice to face up to the issue. It has between 20 and 30 acres of city-centre prime development land at Mountjoy. To start knocking bits of Mountjoy Prison down and building them up again is simply insane. It is a waste of taxpayers' money. The time has come for the Department to say that...

Seanad: Civil Liability (Schools) Bill 2023: Second Stage (19 Apr 2023)

Michael McDowell: ...civil liability for occupiers because, in my view, that is also overdue. I think that occupier's liability again is an instance where artificially high standards of proof are applied to the homes, lands and premises of strangers, which people do not apply in their own life. We trip over our own garden stones, trip over this, fall down here or drop ladders here and there, for example....

Seanad: Judicial Appointments Commission Bill 2022: Report Stage (Resumed) (18 Apr 2023)

Michael McDowell: ...Constitution, one of which is to advise the Cabinet on the suitability of people. That has existed since 1937. That role of the Attorney General is part of the basic and fundamental law of the land and it cannot simply be wished out of existence.It cannot simply be reduced to the point of meaninglessness such that the man or woman who is Attorney General has to sit in a room and say...

Seanad: Judicial Appointments Commission Bill 2022: Report Stage (28 Mar 2023)

Michael McDowell: ...are somehow required to eliminate risks of corruption, lack of integrity and improper standards on the part of the Judiciary. There has never been a case of corruption made out against a judge in Ireland, even in outline. There was the case of Mr. Justice Brian Curtin, where I, as Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, had to move a motion for his impeachment, but that was...

Seanad: Judicial Appointments Commission Bill 2022: Committee Stage (Resumed) (26 Oct 2022)

Michael McDowell: ...and to perform that function. As the Minister said, there are important areas of law that have not been mentioned in any of the amendments, such as intellectual property law, family law and land law. We cannot just cherry-pick our favourite aspects of law and say that those are criteria which justify somebody being selected or not being selected for lay membership of the commission.

Seanad: Judicial Appointments Commission Bill 2022: Committee Stage (Resumed) (26 Oct 2022)

Michael McDowell: ...matter of fundamental constitutional importance. If there were an Article 26 reference, the Attorney General would have to make submissions and he or she would have to explain to the highest court in the land precisely why this is constitutional. Therefore, we are left with the possibility that the President, under Article 26, having consulted the Council of State, would put this matter...

Seanad: Judicial Appointments Commission Bill 2022: Committee Stage (18 Oct 2022)

Michael McDowell: ...8, between lines 34 and 35, to insert the following: “ “practitioner representative” means a practising member of the solicitors or barristers profession nominated by the Law Society of Ireland or the General Council of the Bar of Ireland, as the case may be, and appointed by the Minister;”. Amendment No. 2 is in the names of myself and my fellow...