Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I agree with the Minister that subsection (4) is not supposed to be a wish list of attributes for particular agendas.The purpose is to get reasonably rounded people with a good handle on what they are being asked to do, which is to assist in the recommendatory process and to perform that function. As the Minister said, there are important areas of law that have not been mentioned in any of the amendments, such as intellectual property law, family law and land law. We cannot just cherry-pick our favourite aspects of law and say that those are criteria which justify somebody being selected or not being selected for lay membership of the commission.