Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

For the benefit of Senator Norris, if he does not have the list of amendments, this amendment proposes to insert a new subsection which states: "The Government may prescribe a time period within which the Commission may make its recommendation in respect of any particular vacancy or apprehended vacancy and the Minister shall inform the Commission of any such time period when requesting the Commission to make any recommendation in respect of such vacancy." It also proposes a second subsection which states: "The Commission shall make any recommendation within the time prescribed by the Government pursuant to subsection (1).".

Since it is an executive function which the Government is carrying out under the Constitution in advising the President to fill a vacancy, this amendment seeks to give the Government some control over the length of time the commission may or may not take to fill any particular vacancy. As I was about to say when I mistook which amendment I was speaking to earlier, there is a lacuna in the Bill, as currently proposed, namely, that no time limits are provided for the commission to carry out its function in respect of any appointment. The purpose of this amendment is to give the Government - it is the Government and not the Minister which has a right under the Constitution to advise the President to fill an appointment - the right to say to the commission that it may have, say, two months, three months, or whatever period is prescribed in which to submit a shortlist to it. Effectively, the commission would get riding orders as to the time within which it is expected to discharge its functions.

In the absence of an amendment of this kind, it seems there inevitably will be delays. People work better to deadlines. If the commission is told it has eight weeks in which to carry out its functions in respect of any particular appointment, if the Government so prescribes, that will concentrate minds in the commission and get it to go through whatever procedures are required in a timely fashion to meet the Government's deadline. Somebody might say this is just a means whereby the Government could prescribe such a short time period within which the commission might make its recommendation that it would effectively steamroll the commission into making very rapid appointments, but that is not what is proposed in this amendment.

I am of the view, I presume most Senators would agree with me on this, that the Government is presumed to act in good faith but it is not the case that we can assume the commission will see the filling of vacancies with the same degree of urgency as the Government might do on any particular occasion. Since it is a governmental function to advise the President under the Constitution, since these shortlists are purely advisory and do not bind the Government in any way under the Constitution and since the Bill preserves the right of the Government to do its own thing, and the Bill, as it is currently constituted, effectively requires the Government to consider first the shortlist submitted by the commission in any particular cases, it seems that if the Government has a residual right to make its own decision in respect of appointments, it should also have a correlative right to say to the commission that if it is going to give the Government a shortlist, it should do so by a certain date and not consider it has three months, three and half months or longer to come up with it, as the Government wants to fill whatever position it is within a shorter timeframe. In my view, the absence of any mechanism whereby some outer time limits can be imposed on the commission is a fault in the legislation as is currently stands and I ask the House to adopt this amendment and vote for it because it will be a considerable improvement on the Act and a considerable disincentive to unnecessary delay.