Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

On what Senator Wilson has just said, the definition of a layperson in section 2 is a person who does not hold and never held judicial office, who is not and never has been the Attorney General, DPP, Chief State Solicitor or a law officer and who was not a practising barrister or solicitor in the relevant period specified by subsection 2, that is, 15 years. It is interesting that a layperson, for the purpose of this new body, can include a legal academic, which is very strange. Professors of law and law lecturers can have views about who should be a judge but a practising barrister is disqualified from having this position. We can have legal academics and not simply PhDs and all the rest of it, as Senator Wilson has mentioned.