Charles Flanagan (Laois, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

These are important amendments, particularly amendment No. 102, which seeks to ensure that the lay members of the procedures committee are, in effect, barred from any participation in the preparation of a statement or of a statement of requisite skills and attributes for a particular judicial office. It strikes at the heart of the Bill because the repeated opposition from Senators McDowell and Norris relates to lay, non-lawyer, non-judicial participation. I oppose this amendment because it seriously weakens the participation in the process of anybody other than in-house lawyers. I have a difficulty with that because what Senator McDowell is seeking to do is designed specifically to silence a non-lawyer voice and mute the lay members before the process is even under way. He referred to the architecture and he is correct because what he is now doing is, at design stage, constructing a process that will, in effect, silence any voice that is not that of an in-house lawyer. The barring of lay members from participating in the preparation of the statement of requisite skills and attributes is, in essence, the same opposition that we have heard in the debate for the past year and a quarter.I am opposed to this amendment, as I was opposed to similar previous amendments, on the basis that any attempt not only to circumscribe the engagement of lay members but to mute them altogether runs against the essential thread of the legislation, as Senator McDowell knows well.