Barry Ward (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There are different units of time for each of them - absolutely. It is two years for Deputies and Senators, five years for a member of the Government, five years for the Attorney General and five years for somebody who served at the Secretary General level in a Department of the Government. The notion that that somehow debars people from the appropriateness of serving in judicial office is wrong.

First, what is much more important than qualifying somebody to serve in judicial office is their actual qualifications. For any person to even fall into this category they would already have to have served for more than ten years in a legal practice role or the other things that are provided for in the Act. This person will already be an accomplished legal professional who has a considerable amount of experience. That is the first thing.

Second, in proposing her amendment, the Senator talked about cross-contamination and the notion that if one has served as a Member of the Houses of the Oireachtas, in the Government or whatever the other categories are, somehow one is no longer fit to hold that office. It presupposes there might be some kind of cross-contamination, instead of looking at the job that is done in these Houses and in government and acknowledging someone has a wealth of experience or an expertise that might lend itself very well to being an effective judicial figure or recognising that when a person works in here for a number of years, they develop a skill set that can be of benefit to the country, be it at judicial level or wherever else it might be. There are so many other areas of legislation where we have told people that if they have been a Deputy, a Minister or even an adviser to a Minister, they must wait a year before they can do jobs in an area where they have built up an expertise and a skill set. I know that there are reasons that might exist. However, I do not understand why, on the one hand, we say we want to encourage people into politics, and on the other hand, we spend all of our time telling people that if they get into politics, they will be hamstrung in getting into any other area of work. I do not think we should be doing that. It is not necessary. This amendment is totally misguided.