Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

C has already got the job in this scenario. If D is added to the list and is appointed, does the commission get the message that A and B are not going to get the job? Is that the way this is proposed to work? Does the message finally sink home in the office of the judicial appointments commission that A and B really are not favoured by the Government so it should not bother short-listing them any more? The Government has twice ignored them and gone for the third person on the list. Will this actually improve the quality of the Judiciary? I do not think it will.

I do not want to be prolix. The three amendments we are dealing with are efforts to create some means for the Government to operate in the circumstance in which it does not agree with and is unhappy with the shortlist and some means for the Government to know what the real situation is in the judicial appointments commission. The Government will wonder why a certain perfectly good judge has never featured in a shortlist coming to it. It will not be able to ask anyone about the matter. Let us be clear about that. That is what this Bill says. One may not ask the commission why so and so is not getting appointed because the only person who will be available to answer that question is the Attorney General, who is bound by confidentiality as to why this perfectly eminent judge just never seems to make the grade and be put on a shortlist. This is a seriously defective proposal. When discussing a later amendment we will come to the whole business of whether people who never make it, first, will really be told they are not making it and, second, will be given what the Minister referred to, which I do not think is provided anywhere in the Bill, that is, feedback as to why they did make it, yet the Attorney General will not be given the right to tell the Government the feedback on such a person. I do not accept any of this. It is all deeply misconceived and will just produce a worse Judiciary.

Finally, Senator Norris thought I was a bit elitist in saying this is not just a job. One member of the Judiciary actually said it is only a job, and that member of the Judiciary was politely corrected by the Court of Appeal. It is a constitutional office. This is not just filling a job-----