Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The point of the amendment is simple. It is to point out to the Minister that the presence of the Chief Justice, as chair of the advisory board, has had no negative effect whatsoever on the quality of people appointed. The present system is much more likely to produce good appointees than the proposed new system.

We will come to the other provisions later that deal with the composition of this board. The Minister said that there is a policy decision that the chair is to be a layperson and that there is, effectively, a policy decision that the Chief Justice is not to chair this process in the future. I ask him, in all honesty and putting his hand on his heart, is there any good reason to introduce that change in the law? Has the presence of the Chief Justice, as chair of the JAAB, had any detrimental effect or any disincentive effect on a top talent becoming available to the Government for appointment? I strongly believe the answer has to be that it has not. I believe there is no good reason to do this except some kind of mad ideological view that the Chief Justice, who has presided over the JAAB since its inception, should not hold the job, crucially, because of the suggestion somehow that judicial cronyism comes into this and that the Judiciary are a self-perpetuating kind of priesthood who select and favour themselves in some way. If my suspicion was just purely a suspicion, that would be one thing. One only has to look at a book co-authored by the Minister, Deputy Ross, in which he made that very charge against that Judiciary. He pointed out that Chief Justices attended other judges children's weddings and so on.