Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Exactly. I am obviously not suggesting there was anything wrong with it. I am saying quite the reverse. The Government was working within its capacity to do that. However, this legislation would oblige the Minister to start the JAAB process, which will now be the judicial appointments commission, JAC, process, for any vacancy. The Cabinet would not be allowed to know the identity of anybody else who might be willing to be appointed insofar as they might signal as much to the judicial appointments commission by application. Moreover, the Attorney General would be prohibited from telling the Cabinet that a person they might appoint was in fact an unsuccessful applicant. I do not want to repeat myself, but as I have said earlier that defies common sense.

I will give a simple example. Let us suppose a vacancy arises on the Supreme Court. At the moment, the people eligible for a vacancy on the Supreme Court are all the existing members of the High Court and all the existing members of the Court of Appeal, which is a group of around 40 to 50 people. I have not counted the exact number. None of them has to indicate an interest in the position under the JAAB process. I understand, and perhaps the Minister will confirm, that an arrangement was made whereby they could inform the secretary of the Government of their willingness to be appointed to a position so it would be easier for the Government to see who is interested and who is not and then make the choice. Qualified barristers and solicitors of 12 or ten years' standing are also eligible. They normally went through the JAAB process, but not mandatorily so.

The Minister is now telling us that he wants the Cabinet not to know who is willing to be appointed. He is doing that in two ways. First, he is bringing forward the provisions of section 62 to stop applicants from signalling their wish to be appointed to the Government. Further to this, he is bringing in the particular amendments to section 27 we are now dealing with, to say that nobody, including the Attorney General, should be entitled to tell the Government about this on pain of criminal offence. I just cannot see why this should be the case.

This is the slightly odd feature. Let us suppose the Government decided that Ms Justice Bloggs, or Mr. So-and-so, senior counsel, is the person it wants to put on the Supreme Court. Rather than press the button and have the judicial appointments commission start conducting interviews and engaging in the elaborate process that is provided for here, the Government could in fact ask the Attorney General to visit the judge in her chambers or the barrister in the Law Library and ask if they would be willing to take an appointment to the Supreme Court. There would be nothing wrong with that. If that process was followed, only part of the public would know that it was not a JAC appointment. I think the Minister has probably told us there is one such person, the person who is watching the debate here and has texted the Minister. In his spare time, when he is not watching the proceedings in this House, this person probably goes through Iris Oifigiúiland studies the judicial appointments notices. That is the only way this will be signalled. If that judge or barrister is appointed to the Supreme Court, the only way the public will have firm statutory confirmation that the JAAB or JAC process has not led to that particular appointment will be by studying the notice in Iris Oifigiúil.

I wish to ask the Minister a simple question. I want to be clear about this. Is he saying unequivocally that the provisions of section 53(5)(h), which are the commission-----