Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

That is the original sin from which one needs redemption of 15 years in purgatory. Alternatively, it could be that from the very beginning one is damned because one wore a judge's robe.

Those are my objections to the paragraph proposed in amendment No. 7. The Minister has not told us why it is necessary to close this "loophole", especially in light of the fact that a lay person would have to go through an immense vetting process in which lawyers would have no input whatsoever. A retired judge or a person who has been ten years out of practice abroad who came and asked to be on this commission would therefore not be judged by lawyers as to his or her suitability; he or she would be judged by the Public Appointments Service procedure. There would be a public advertisement and a recruitment process, and the recommendations would be made to the Minister, who would then put them before both Houses of the Oireachtas. That is how people would end up on the commission. Why are we singling out even more candidates as incapable of going through this process? No case has been made for this and it should not be permitted. I do not know where the idea came from. It was never raised, as far as I know, on Committee Stage in this House. I am not querying whether the amendment is potentially out of order on that account but I am making the point that no one ever came up with this wild theory that some foreign lawyer might somehow escape the sieve of the Minister, Deputy Ross, get through the system and end up on the judicial appointments commission.

Amendments Nos. 8 and 9, as the Leas-Chathaoirleach helpfully pointed out, will fall aside if amendment No. 7 is agreed to. Amendment No. 9 proposes, in respect of the original text, to add to paragraph (b) of the definition of a "lay person" the exclusion of members of An Garda Síochána, in other words that a person cannot be or have been an Attorney General, a DPP, a Chief State Solicitor, a law officer or a member of An Garda Síochána. I would have thought the Minister would have accepted that amendment. Are superintendents and other members of An Garda Síochána, having completed their terms as members of the force, when they prosecute to be capable of being regarded as lay persons when they retire whereas solicitors who have defended such people whom inspectors, sergeants and superintendents prosecuted are not capable of being seen as lay persons for 15 years after they retire? That is an interesting point because sergeants, inspectors and superintendents act as prosecutors in court, that is, they prosecute people before judges. That is illogical, and I would have expected the Minister to accept that amendment. I presume it is in order for the Minister to say he would expand his definition of paragraph (b) to include members of An Garda Síochána because they are just as much prosecutors and practitioners in the District Court in many respects as a good deal of solicitors, some of whom never darken the doors of courts at all. Many solicitors never go to court and never have anything to do with the courts system. They are in massive palaces all around this city - God bless them, I have no objection to them - and can specialise in activities which have nothing at all to do with the judicial process. They can sit in offices advising on murders, acquisitions, conveyancing matters, commercial contracts and all sorts of other things and never darken the doors of courts and never see the inside of one. I remember a very eminent senior colleague of mine and I were waiting for a case to go on-----