Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will come back to the six illustrious people on the university panels. I refer specifically to the vocational panels. We need to get back to the vocational qualifications that were required, and to legitimise those qualifications when somebody goes forward for election.

To return to the university panels, I have great sympathy for my colleague, Senator Norris. I would want to see the representation of that unique group of people in Ireland who represent the Protestant community, the Trinity College panel, retained in some way but there is room within the Bill to ring-fence a number of seats for specific interests if we need to do that. That is something that could be teased out on Committee Stage.

Ideally, we would go the whole hog and have a referendum, remove the 11 Taoiseach's nominees and bring those into the electoral process-----