Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

-----has no qualifications or experience of how the legal profession or the legal system works of a hands-on type. It can be argued that the Bill envisages that, among the laypeople, people with knowledge of how the courts impact society will be included and that includes perhaps people from the insurance area, people concerned with family law and the like. We are still stuck with the fundamental issue, which is that we are setting up this commission on the basis that the chairperson may not be a practising barrister or solicitor, a judge or the Attorney General. The question that we have to ask ourselves in that context is why those people are disqualified from chairing the commission and having a casting vote, if it ever should come to that.

I have come to the conclusion that there is no valid reason the commission itself should not select its own chairperson. I cannot see any reason, whether it is a minority or majority of laypeople on the commission, why they should not, among themselves, select their own chairperson. Why is it important that the chairperson be selected by a separate process and, so to speak, imposed upon the commission? Why can the commission not select its own chairperson? This reminds me of the process where we set up a Seanad reform implementation group recently. It is noteworthy that in that context the Taoiseach proposed that no less a person than myself should be the chairperson of the group.