Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am focusing on the amendment. I am speaking exactly to the amendment and to the substance of the amendment. The Minister is saying, as a reason for not accepting this amendment, that the scenario whereby there will be consequential vacancies, as the rule rather than the exception, is overly dramatising the situation, but he is plainly wrong. If I am over dramatising the situation, could he kindly explain to this House why he has not, in all of the appointments he has made, chosen somebody from outside the ranks of the Judiciary for appointment to the Supreme Court or Court of Appeal? Why has he not done it? If I am dramatising the situation and saying this is the norm and this is the likely outcome, he has no such constraint on him at the moment. He says I am over dramatising the situation by saying that where there is a vacancy in those courts, it is likely to be filled by a member of those courts, there are likely to be consequential vacancies and, as a result, as the Bill now stands, unless this amendment is accepted, each of them will have to be the subject of a sequential separate appointment process.