Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Diversity and all the rest of it, but when it comes to making a decision of this kind, the Minister is saying no, they are not to have a function in this, that it is a governmental function on which the Government will take advice from senior judges but not from a majority lay body. Where is the reasoning and justification for that distinction? I can see it a mile away. It is that the Government would prefer to trust its own judgment on these matters to that of a group of people selected in the manner set out in this legislation, in draft form, for the selection and organisation of the lay majority judicial appointments commission.

I am not trying to be smart here. I am asking the Minister to justify why the commission cannot address itself to that issue in a manner that he would be prepared to accept. Why does he propose to come back with section 44 to keep it a million miles away from those three positions? The answer must be that he does not trust it to do as good a job as the Government being advised by the Attorney General and three senior judges. The Minister does not trust the commission on the selection of those three positions to do as good a job as his soon to be formulated revised section 44 would.

That makes my point for me. It makes my point for me that this group of people are not to be trusted with certain functions because, on this evidence, they do not know sufficiently much to give advice. Otherwise, the amendment made in the Dáil, which-----