Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

It makes it very clear to me. The statement that this is about cronyism and perpetuating political patronage and favours, and that is what I am doing here, really needs to be underlined when the Minister's own Cabinet colleagues have made 36 appointments. Either those are good appointments - I think they are good appointments - or they are not. Either they are exercises in political patronage or they are not, and I do not believe they have been. Either the appointments that have been made fall into the category of political favours being given to people or they do not.

This Government, this Taoiseach and this Minister for Justice and Equality should publicly condemn that kind of language about the decisions which this Government itself has made and say it is unacceptable. It must say that far from depoliticising the appointment of judges, this language accuses the Minister's colleagues in the most scandalous way of engaging in patronage and favour-giving without any justification whatsoever. It is about time that Fine Gael got off the fence completely and admitted that it does not agree with this legislation. The great majority of Members of both Houses of the Oireachtas from the Fine Gael Party, with whom I have had private conversations, do not agree with a word of this legislation.