Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister has just said he is concerned about whether I am trying to achieve a blanket effect or an effect in relation to individual jobs or levels of jobs, or individual appointments or levels of appointment, in the Judiciary, but I am not clear. It is intended to be a blanket provision that no sitting judge who applies for any other position in the courts should be the subject of a preliminary report to the judicial appointments commission on his or her suitability for appointment. Let us take a very simple example. Let us take an ordinary judge of the Court of Appeal or the Supreme Court. It seems that no judge should be subject to an outside person running the rule over him or her as to whether he or she is or is not suitable for appointment to such a position. That is my proposal. There is no motive behind it, except to rule out the grotesque alternative that the commission might state it had received 12 applications for a vacancy for an ordinary judge in the Supreme Court and that before it would ever get to look at them, it was appointing some expert consultant - I do not know whom it would be - to examine the applications and give it a preliminary view on whether any or all of them should be accepted. I regard that as a grotesque possibility. Therefore, it was with some confidence that I moved the amendment to exclude it.

Let us consider a judge of the District or the Circuit Court who is applying for a position in the next court in the hierarchy of courts. Why, in Heaven's name, should the application received from such a judge who had made it because the Minister insisted on it being made be sent to be vetted by some so-called consultant who would report to the commission on his or her findings on the suitability of the judge? That is reprehensible and grotesque at any level. What would this consultant say about a District Court judge? What would an outsider say - that the judge was unsuitable? What would an outsider say about a Circuit Court judge - that he or she was unsuitable? Would they winnow them out and say they were not good enough for consideration and that the commission should not look at them? The same applies to a Circuit Court judge in looking for a High Court position, to a High Court judge in looking for a Court of Appeal position or to a Court of Appeal judge in looking for a Supreme Court position. Why have a situation where an outside expert would look at applications and start to put ticks and an X on them, ruling them suitable or unsuitable in a preliminary report to the commission? I cannot imagine any circumstance in which that would be done.

The Minister may talk about the best cow in the dairy herd kicking over the pail-----