Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I support Senator McDowell's amendment. The Acting Chairman has been involved in boards of management of schools and the like and he is aware of the difficulty that is experienced at a time when a vacancy arises within an organisation. Here we are talking about a public appointment to a senior judicial position. One sets a date by which the recommendation has to be brought before the Government.We are talking about a commission that consists not of just of members of the Judiciary but members of the public. One must try to bring those people together in order to agree, for example, the advertisement, in the first instance. Once the advertisement has been agreed and published, one has to go through the short-listing period. We already have seen how that will be carried out. Once the short-listing is completed, one then has to get the board together again to carry out the interviews, before one ever arrives at the point of making a recommendation. That can be an extremely difficult task, depending on the time of the year in which it falls and depending on the commitment of senior members of the Judiciary who are part of the commission. They may not be able to appear at a particular time because of commitments to the courts or whatever. I agree that the way to focus minds is to put a time limit there. One sets a date by which it must be brought before the Government.

While I understand Senator Norris's two "mays", the point made by Senator McDowell that subsection 2, with the "shall make a recommendation" trumps the second "may" and takes care of that. To allow a situation to develop where we have an open-ended laissez-faire-type approach, that is, where one fills the vacancy when one is ready, is simply not good enough.

We might also find ourselves in a situation in the event - one would not like to see it happen - of the untimely death of a judge, in which there was an urgent requirement to fill a post. From that point of view, the Government must be in a position to put time limits to ensure the commission carries out its work in a timely way for the needs of the State and the Judiciary. This is a simple change to the Bill that gives the sort of clarity that Senator McDowell is talking about. It removes that lacuna to which he adverted and it would give the Government a sense of reassurance that when a vacancy arises, it will be filled by a certain time. For that reason we should ask the Minister, who has been more than willing to accept amendments in the past, to perhaps accept this one too.