Barry Ward (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Senator Currie and I tabled an amendment, No. 9, which is on the same lines as this. As my colleague has outlined, in the original iteration of the legislation, there was a provision to allow the IHREC, an important State body with important functions, to be involved in the decisions of the commission about who would be proposed to Government for appointment. It was originally included specifically as nominating a member of the commission. In this iteration of the Bill, that has been amended so that there are now four lay members. It is possible that one of those lay members might also be a member of IHREC. We are trying not to leave that up to chance and for the Minister to decide that he or she may, when appointing people to the commission, appoint a person from IHREC.

The other difficulty that arises is that the legislation provides for the Public Appointments Service, PAS, to make recommendations to the Minister. He or she is quite hamstrung about how he or she can approach the recommendations of the PAS with regard to who might be appointed to the commission. The danger is that somebody from IHREC, for whatever reason, might not come through that process. I have a great difficulty with this process. It is the subject of other amendments that I have tabled. I cast no aspersions on the PAS as a body because it has a particular function that it carries out in a particular way, but that particular way does not necessarily suit everybody who might be coming through that process or who might apply. The reality is that the PAS must have measurable targets in its system to assess the suitability or otherwise of a candidate. It ignores the fact that not everybody will fit into the metric provided for by those Civil Service systems. I would much rather see the Minister having much greater flexibility and autonomy with regard to who he or she appoints to the commission than is provided for in this legislation.

That all amounts to the fact that it is harder and harder for a member of IHREC to get onto the judicial appointments commission and, therefore, have a bearing on who is recommended to the Government for a judicial appointment. The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission correctly perceives that it has a role to play here. The judicial appointments commission would benefit from its expertise. I have tabled other amendments about reordering the criteria that would apply for appointment to the commission, for example. What is most important is that we have an opportunity in this legislation to say that it should have the right to be part of the commission and to have its say. It will not necessarily be determinative because, at the end of the day, one member out of nine will not necessarily hold sway, but having somebody from IHREC who has perspective on human rights issues to have his or her say is tremendously important. I am concerned about the way that section 9, which provides for the membership of the commission, is phrased. It does not mean that there will necessarily be any consideration for those issues.

Section 13(4) has other definitions for how it would decide or what criteria would be applied. Experience in business, finance, public service, corporate governance and human resources appear to be foremost among the criteria, which, to my mind, have little to do with the assessment of skills, criteria, expertise or the skill set that an individual might have that would make him or her appropriate for appointment to judicial office. Notwithstanding that, the point of this is that judges, in their day-to-day business, will have to grapple with human rights issues. The benefit of having somebody on the commission who has seen things through the prism of a human rights perspective, that is, a nominee of IHREC, though it does not have to be a member of the commission but could be somebody who it chooses, is that he or she would be able to represent that perspective at commission meetings when looking at a nominee to send to Government. There is an opportunity to put that person on the commission. The way the Bill is phrased at the moment totally ignores that. It sidelines IHREC. I do not believe that is the intention, but it is the reality of what happens. IHREC will no longer have direct input into the commission's output, which is the shame. It will also degrade the quality of the representative or nominee that the commission will send to Government, which is a shame.

This group of amendments would amend that so that we have a specific reference to IHREC and a place for it. We are not adding an additional person. I tabled alternative amendments that would have done that. We are saying that one of the four lay members should be nominated by IHREC rather than the Minister because the reality is that the Minister has been hamstrung by the legislation since he or she cannot choose people beyond the recommendations that come from the PAS.

I suggested in amendment No. 10 that we would add an additional person who would be appointed by IHREC. That is apparently out of order. The point that I was going to make is that it is regrettable that when Senator Currie tabled that amendment, she received an email that she was asked to pass on to me, stating that my amendment had been ruled out of order. I do not understand why there was not a provision in the Houses of the Oireachtas whereby that email could not also have been sent to me or I could at least have been copied on it. I did not know about it until that information was shared with me by the Senator. I do not agree with it being ruled out of order but that is another day's work. The point I am making with these amendments is that there is a space for IHREC and it has a role to play. It should be entitled to play that role and it should not be left to chance.