Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Academics should be capable of being chairperson of the commission and of being appointed to judicial office and retaining their position as chairperson notwithstanding their being a lawyer.

My second point is one the Minister may tire of hearing but which he never deals with in a substantive response. I have repeatedly said in the course of this debate that the Minister has brought proposals to Government for the appointment of excellent people as judges, people whose appointment has excited absolutely no controversy of any kind whatsoever and who are generally accepted to be highly qualified and excellent people. The Judicial Appointments Advisory Board which recommended these people to the Government for appointment has, as far as I can see, been chaired at all material times by the Chief Justice. One might ask whether that chairmanship by the chief Justice is a good thing or a bad thing. Is it giving rise to inferior candidates being recommended to Government or is it inhibiting people who might otherwise apply for judicial appointment - perhaps they would apply to the commission, if it is ever established - from applying to the Judicial Appointments Advisory Board?

The problem with this whole enterprise is that the answer to these questions is obvious. The high-quality candidates the Minister has proposed to the Cabinet for selection have been recommended in the main, I presume, by the advisory board, which is chaired by the Chief Justice. Neither the current incumbent nor his predecessor has been a negative influence on the type of person who is available or had any type of dampening effect on the willingness of people to become judges. I would go one step further and wager that some of the excellent people the Minister and his colleagues in Government have appointed, notwithstanding the squeaking of protest from one member of the Cabinet about appointments being made at all, if the media are to believed, would never have applied to the proposed judicial appointments commission if it were in existence. Some of them would have declined to put their names forward for a number of reasons.

It was the practice when I was Attorney General and Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, and has continued recently to be the practice, as I understand it, that there was an element of talent spotting and persuasion of people who might not otherwise, off their own bat, seek to be judges. Rather than the entirely passive idea proposed in this legislation, the practice has been that people were approached and asked if they would put their name forward to the Judicial Appointments Advisory Board on the understanding that they would be favourably considered if the board approved their application. There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, there is everything to be said in favour of that regime.This Bill sets out to dismantle it and to replace it with a totally different regime where it is not considered proper for the members of the commission to go hunting for people to become judges. The whole thing is passive. The question of having conversations with people and urging them to apply for judicial office is imperilled by the canvassing provisions later in the legislation. Maybe I am straying slightly away from the point of the amendment.