Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

Senator O'Donovan is not listening to me. The nub of his case is that I should have in place a selection system, where I preserve the existing law with the attendant uncertainty and assume somebody is ineligible and about whose eligibility there is only uncertainty. Then we hold a competition that only allows the selection of one person. That is not a competition. Let us say we reduce the required number of years practice from ten years to eight. Guess how many additional competitors we would have.