Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister has said that it is usual for people to interview for positions. Take the position of a lecturer or professor in a university. It is extremely unusual to say that the only groups of people who cannot be there at the interview board are lecturers or professors. That is what we are doing here. As Senator Ward said, if someone is to be appointed to a medical position, it is extremely unusual to say that the only people who cannot have any input into the decision at all are other medical practitioners. That is what this Bill is achieving. I accept the Minister's point that we would not have this legislation at all if JAAB was perfect. However, to say this is an improvement on JAAB does not and cannot mean that it is the ideal solution. I do not accept the proposition.

I often wonder who these laypeople are going to be. I am fairly certain they will face a cohort of judges and the judges are going to be in a position to discuss things beforehand and the laypeople will find themselves slightly on the outside. The groups of people who could come to the aid of the process and with whom appointers could discuss the matter are other practitioners, who could be asked if particular candidates are really as good as they are making themselves out to be. I would like the Minister's input on that point.

The Minister also made the point that a young District Court judge may be on the Bench. How likely is it that the Judicial Council is going to select the most recently appointed judge to go forward to this body? If I know judges, the least likely outcome is that they would appoint the most junior judge to this body when there are others who have spent 15 or 20 years on the Bench. Those judges are not going to prefer a barrister or solicitor who has recently been appointed a judge in order to find out what the professions think about the suitability of a candidate.

The Minister is well aware that everything in the legal profession is changing. The majority of practitioners on both sides are now women, or that is nearly the case. We do not have to lean over backwards to achieve gender balance in the professions. The professions are gender balanced at the moment. As far as I can see, the Bar Council of Ireland is a gender-balanced entity. We recently had two women chairpersons. The notion that barristers or solicitors should be excluded because they are barristers or solicitors is indefensible.

The point is that the definition of a layperson in section 2, which is the section we are dealing with, excludes barristers or solicitors, effectively, unless they are well out of practice. In its totality, this Bill means that the only groups of people being excluded from becoming members of this commission in any shape or form are practising barristers or solicitors. Of all the people who could be on the commission, this Bill goes to considerable trouble to state that a practising barrister or solicitor can never be part of this process. For the Minister to come before this House and say she has great respect for the two professions is fair enough, and I take her at her word. However, we are being asked to enact a Bill for the first time - and the former Minister, Deputy Flanagan, never tried this trick - to state that the only groups of people who cannot have any input whatsoever into the deliberation of this commission are practising barristers and solicitors. They are somehow considered unsuitable to participate in this commission because they are practising. That is the logic. Section 2 states that these professionals do not qualify as laypeople and are not judges. Therefore, the Bill is stating that veterinarians, advertising agents or medical doctors can be on this commission but a woman who is a practising solicitor or barrister is deemed unsuitable to serve on this commission. I do not accept that. I do not think there is any logic to it. A frozen mind is being brought to this issue, based on the proposition that we want to keep the commission small and even between laypeople and people who have legal experience. We are confining it, therefore, to judges versus laypeople, one block against another, when we could so easily have done what the former Minister, Deputy Flanagan, did, that is, to provide that the two professions could be represented on this commission.

When the dust settles on the debate around this Bill, we are saying to practising barristers and solicitors of either gender that as a matter of law, they are the only people who cannot participate in this commission for some ideological reason. That is wrong.