Results 21-40 of 725 for long speaker:Michael McDowell

Seanad: Offences Against the State (Amendment) Act 1998 and Criminal Justice (Amendment) Act 2009: Motions (27 Jun 2023)

Michael McDowell: I support the motion. I have some sympathy with the Sinn Féin amendment but I think it will take longer than 12 months to get all the ducks in a row to do what is necessary. On the question as to whether further or different legislation is necessary, I want to say that the whole concept of scheduled offences is, and always has been, a slightly dubious one. The relevant provision of...

Seanad: Garda Reserve: Statements (31 May 2023)

Michael McDowell: ...Dáil Éireann, it received all-party support. The one group that was opposed to it at the time was the Garda Representative Association, GRA. One of its officers said he would be waiting in the long grass for me as a result of establishing it, words that I think were unfortunate at the time. Unfortunately, many members of the reserve found there were people waiting in the long...

Seanad: Regulation of Lobbying (Amendment) Bill 2022: Report and Final Stages (17 May 2023)

Michael McDowell: ...When it came to that LNG terminal, it appeared the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications, Deputy Eamon Ryan, was quite prepared to have storage facilities for gas in Ireland as long as they were publicly owned. I do not know what the rights and wrongs of that are either, but he seemed to have an ideological objection to any private construction of these facilities and...

Seanad: Judicial Appointments Commission Bill 2022: Report Stage (Resumed) and Final Stage (17 May 2023)

Michael McDowell: ...amendments have been put before this House. I will make one other point. It has been stated on a number of occasions here that this Bill is somehow necessary to bring our system of appointing judges into line with European norms. The Long Title of the Bill seems to imply the same. I recently spoke to someone whom I will not identify but who is a very senior person in the court of...

Seanad: Courts Bill 2023: Second Stage (10 May 2023)

Michael McDowell: ...for some reason. Everybody else, and all of us here, have had our pay restored. It is a nasty little gesture that it refuses point blank to give these people back what they were originally paid a long time ago, and forget about inflation in the meantime. It is an absolute scandal. I am saying that those people who are making those decisions in that Department should look at themselves...

Seanad: Courts Bill 2023: Second Stage (10 May 2023)

Michael McDowell: ...to get a trial. What kind of planet are we living on? Look at the system in England as well, for people who commit murders. A prison officer who scandalously kidnapped and killed a woman is long since in jail now. In Ireland, he would probably be in the first two or three years of his bail period. That is a scandal. Something has to be done about it, and it is the responsibility of...

Seanad: Electoral Reform (Amendment) and Electoral (Amendment) Bill 2023: Second Stage (10 May 2023)

Michael McDowell: ...the report, that person could do so in Private Members' time and he would allow a free vote on the matter. In short, he was trying to kill the Bill in the most cynical and brutal fashion. I am here a long time and I did not lose my temper with him, but I looked at him very differently from that day on. There was a matter of honour involved in that he asked us to work on terms of...

Seanad: Nithe i dtosach suíonna - Commencement Matters: Seanad Reform (4 May 2023)

Michael McDowell: I welcome the Minister of State. It is a long time since the people of Ireland voted on this issue in 1979, in the dim and distant past. That is the first point. The second is that it is five weeks since the Supreme Court handed down its judgment in the matter. It is also the case that the Supreme Court has said it will extend the stay on its decision until the end of July in order that...

Seanad: Finance Bill 2023: Second Stage (25 Apr 2023)

Michael McDowell: ...running very substantial budgetary surpluses based, in large measure on increased receipts of corporation tax. I see many newspaper articles saying this is artificial and should not be relied on in the long term. It could be a short-term phenomenon in that it might, in the coming years, dissipate to some extent due to international conditions. However, I have not heard anybody who has...

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

Michael McDowell: This amendment has the purpose of removing from the Long Title of the Bill words contained at lines 14 to 22.Those words are as follows: ... to provide for the aforementioned matters having regard to the recommendation of the Council of Europe’s Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) that the system of selection, recommendation and promotion of judges target the appointments to the...

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

Michael McDowell: .... The Attorney General can watch the proceedings as a kind of legal voyeur but can have no hand, act or part in the consummation of the decision-making process. If anybody thought about this for long, he or she would say we should not deliberately create a situation where a body composed of even numbers has no casting vote and where one of its members, who might have a vote, may not...

Seanad: Environmental Protection Agency (Emergency Electricity Generation) (Amendment) Bill 2023: Committee and Remaining Stages (9 Mar 2023)

Michael McDowell: It is important to bear in mind that keeping the lights on is an important immediate policy aim and obligation of government. Whatever one might say about long-term strategy, and I intend to say a few words about that too, keeping the lights on on an emergency basis is an imperative for government. We have to be practical in how we achieve that aim. On the long-term strategy, Senator...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on European Union Affairs: General Affairs Council: Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs (8 Mar 2023)

Michael McDowell: ...of State to become involved in any domestic UK matter, I take it that parliamentary approval is, as his statement made clear, something that has to happen. There is a danger that if it goes on too long, there will be a loss of momentum. As other things happen with asylum-seeking in the UK and the like, it is important we do not allow too much grass to grow under our feet in relation to...

Seanad: Judicial Appointments Commission Bill 2022: Committee Stage (Resumed) (7 Mar 2023)

Michael McDowell: I will say a few things about the Schedule. I will not detain the House long. The Schedule deals with the constitution of the commission and sundry provisions relating to its procedures and staff. I will take the opportunity to reiterate that the Constitution adopted in 1937 accorded to the Government of Ireland, a democratically elected body, the right to choose from eligible people who...

Seanad: Judicial Appointments Commission Bill 2022: Committee Stage (Resumed) (25 Jan 2023)

Michael McDowell: ...the case of two or three appointments when, as I said, dealing with the ordinary membership of the Supreme Court, which has eight members. One of those members would, in effect, be in a position, along with the other judicial appointees, to determine who is or is not eligible for appointment to that job and the Government would have no discretion to appoint any of the majority of the...

Seanad: Judicial Appointments Commission Bill 2022: Committee Stage (Resumed) (15 Nov 2022)

Michael McDowell: ...the list comes back. In the case of the District Court, for example, if there are 40 applicants, the first thing is whether all of them get an interview. I wonder if they do. That could take a long time to get through. Decisions then have to be made on who is best suited to be on the shortlist. That must then go to the Cabinet. I would be very surprised if the commission manages to...

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

Michael McDowell: ...of eligible people.We are saying that unless one gets a ticket from the judicial appointments commission, one is disqualified from appointment and is made ineligible, in effect. Of course, we could go a long way down the road of saying that eligibility means the following things but, in the end, if we pervert the meaning of eligibility to mean, "decided to be suitable by somebody else...

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

Michael McDowell: ...declared under the Constitution to be null and void because that judge has been persuaded by the arguments put before him or her. I am, therefore, sceptical of people saying GRECO says this or the Long Title says that. Our system is fundamentally different. I recently attended a conference in Lisbon where a member of the French council of state, its highest court, gave us an insight into...

Seanad Public Consultation Committee: Voices of All Communities on the Constitutional Future of the Island of Ireland: Discussion (30 Sep 2022)

Michael McDowell: ...You can get two component parts of this island to share their membership of the European Union. You could even have some vestiges of linkage to Britain remaining in the northern architecture, as long as there was an Irish confederation. I have done a paper on this and put it before Jeffrey Donaldson a few years ago. I believe to ask unionists to surrender - I am using that term in the...

Seanad: Budget 2023 (Finance): Statements (27 Sep 2022)

Michael McDowell: ...online journals. Journalism is in crisis for various reasons, such as changing patterns of consumption and free social media, in particular as consumed by the younger generation. This step has long been advocated and I am glad the Government is taking it because we need newspapers, balanced opinion and a variety of sources for information and opinion on current affairs and all the other...