Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I was dealing with the staffing requirements of this new body and pointing out that the present arrangements are remarkably efficiently run with a very small staff. The Minister states the task of the new board will be immensely more elaborate because it will deal with selection and recommendations and with developing its own procedures. I am surprised to hear that the present Judicial Appointments Advisory Board does not actually do that and does not consider its own procedures or regulate itself. I had imagined it would do so to the extent necessary. I notice that under section 11(7), there is to be provision for consultants and advisers to be appointed from time to time in addition to the regular complement of civil servants who will be the staff of the judicial appointments commission. Although I listened attentively to what the Minister was saying perhaps I did not pick up clearly what the entire anticipated staff complement of the commission is to be. I heard him state that he intended that this body should come into existence roughly contemporaneously with the judicial council. I was not clear whether it was being suggested that the judicial council, which presumably will not have a lay member, will be directing the same staff or sharing the same staff as the judicial appointments commission. Will there be a shared staff complement for both bodies? The same applies to their office accommodation. Will there be a shared accommodation between the judicial council on the one hand and the judicial appointments commission on the other? I ask the Minister to indicate, because clearly it is important for us to get a handle on the size of this institution that is being put in place, exactly how many members of staff there will be of a permanent kind. What does the Minister envisage - because he has made statutory provision for it - will be needed in addition to that for appointment as consultants and advisers under section 11(9)? It seems to me that running selection interviews is a complex operation. In particular, the Minister should indicate how expensive it is, for instance, to run interviews in the Public Appointments Service at the moment for jobs. The Minister will have to have some idea of personnel implications and the staffing implications of running selection interviews which, as I understand it, are to be central to the process of appointment from now on.

The Minister has also stated there is a spectrum of fees for chairpersons and members and where the members of this commission fit upon that spectrum will depend on further consultation between the Minister's Department and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. I do not think that is satisfactory. It is not a matter of consultation between two Ministers as to whether the chairperson is given €15,000 a year or €30,000 because €15,000 would be wholly inadequate as remuneration for somebody who was to effectively chair a commission that will be involved in each and every judicial appointment in the State, which means running interviews for it, considering all the candidates and getting reports from consultants and advisers on people who might or might not submit their name and the like. This is a very serious job. I indicated earlier in the debate on this legislation my deep disquiet at the thought that this job would, effectively, be done by the director of the office and that a group of people would come into a room, get evaluations of judges carried out by consultants and advisers who are appointed on contract and put them in front of a majority lay body and minority judicial and legal body to be rubber-stamped. We should want to attract people who are willing to give up significant amounts of their time to participate in the interview process to this position of chairperson and ordinary lay membership of the board. To put it all in context, when I was Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, in respect of some vacancies in the District Court bench there could be up to 90 or 100 applicants. That is my memory in retrospect; I hope I am not exaggerating. There was an enormous number of applicants. If they are not all going to be sifted out by unpaid contractors posing as consultants and advisers and if they are all to get an interview for a District Court position, the question that arises then is who will conduct those interviews? How many members of the board will sit in on such interviews? We live in a very politically correct world now where interviews have to be conducted very impartially. The same questions have to be put to virtually everyone. No value-laden questions should be put to them. No prejudicial questions should be put to them.The whole knack of avoiding discrimination accusations when interviewing people for public and private sector positions has become highly complicated. One cannot just breeze in, have people think up random thoughts, as such as might occur to Senator Norris, and throw them at an applicant because one had nothing else to consider.