Barry Ward (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This amendment is absolutely and utterly misguided. It preposterously presupposes that it is appropriate for this House to rush headlong, as it has done in lots of other legislation, towards excluding former Members from any kind of operation after they leave this House. Oftentimes, in fact perhaps most of the time, people leave this or the other House without very much notice and find themselves in a situation where they have to get a job. I am not sure necessarily that the Judiciary is a place that they are likely to bet on ending up. However, the notion behind this amendment excludes four different categories of person: former Members of the Houses of the Oireachtas; former members of Government, which obviously have an overlap; the Attorney General; or persons who have served at a certain level within the Civil Service. Again, it presupposes that these people are in some way inappropriate-----