Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

That is a very simple question. The Bill, as currently devised, does not make that clear and seems to suggest the Government would not be told that. It is an alarming proposition that the Government would be given three names, graded one, two and three, and its members would sit down at the Cabinet table unaware that the most intelligent woman solicitor or the most brilliant senior counsel or legal academic in Ireland was on the list and was anxious to get the job but was rejected.The Government is entitled to know these things. Asking the Government to operate on the basis that it is a submarine without a periscope and that it only gets a limited message of three names graded one, two and three by the commission, without telling it that 25 other people were rejected and without disclosing those names, is deeply offensive to reason. At least the Judicial Appointments Advisory Board, JAAB, process, with all of its infirmities, tells the Government who was on the list. That is what I find worrying about this. I ask for answers to those questions.