Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

There will be occasions where the Government will appoint a member of the High Court or Supreme Court and it will also have before it a vacancy regarding another appointment for the High Court. In those circumstances, the Minister should consider introducing some kind of system whereby the Government can make two appointments from the same shortlist. It seems pointless to have to start the whole process again. I refer to what is done at the moment with the Judicial Appointments Advisory Board. I do not see why this has to be made unbelievably complicated by requiring that the process start again every time, even if the Government itself has just created a vacancy by promoting someone to the High Court or the Court of Appeal. As things stand, that vacancy would have to be advertised instead of someone being appointed from the existing shortlist. Why would the Government not appoint a person who had recently been recommended and shortlisted to a vacancy the Government itself had just created? It would make sense to do that.

Moving on to amendment No. 92b, in the names of myself and Senators Boyhan and Craughwell, this amendment proposes to delete “or, in the case of section 44 the Government in accordance with the provisions of this Act”. If this amendment is accepted, it would have the advantage of dealing with Senator Norris's grammatical point. The Minister has told us he intends to amend section 44 but he has not told us exactly how he is going to do that. It is unfortunate that we keep making provision for section 44 recommendations when we do not know how it will function. A series of additional amendments have been proposed by Senators during the debate on this Bill and it is time the Minister came forward with his formula for section 44. We could then understand what it is he has in mind when we deal with those other sections that make reference to section 44. The Minister does not like section 44 as it is but he has not stated what he proposes to do instead. We keep on, however, dealing with sections that make reference to section 44, yet nobody in this House, that I know of, wants to keep that section in its present form. We are told that we have to look-----