Barry Ward (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

To my mind section 41(1) only refers to the applicants. There is no restriction. The offence can only be committed by an applicant rather than by a member of Cabinet or anybody else involved in the process. The applicant is the person named so that is the person who is prohibited from doing the things described in section 41(1).

What Senator McDowell describes is something that presumably could already happen. He is quite right in being concerned about the confidentiality of the process. That is paramount because if potential applicants or applicants do not have faith in the confidentiality of the process, many of them simply will not apply because they do not want a situation where they are potentially discussed in a negative context of not having been selected. That is the reality of the people we are talking about as potential members of the Judiciary. That is important.

I personally do not think this is necessary, certainly not in the very strict terms in which it is described here. I do not think it creates any prohibition either on the Minister making his or her own inquiries if I can put it is those terms. I disagree with the Minister in regard to her statement on the interview process adding to the information available to Cabinet. I have an amendment later to section 46(1)(b) to remove that requirement because the difference between what is being suggested here and what the Minister is suggesting is that the Minister’s suggestion requires the Minister to rely on information that is coming to him or her through the Civil Service process, through the process that is nominated in this Bill which is fine. However, it is a different quality of information from information which a Minister might obtain from somebody he or she trusts, who might perhaps know the individuals or the system. There is a different quality to the information provided through both of those processes, on the one hand through an interview and the competitive Civil Service style process that is envisaged by this Bill and, on the other hand, a person with personal knowledge who might pass it on to somebody he or she knows or trusts in those processes. I do not think section 41 is necessary but maybe I have more faith in the system than I should. In any event I do not believe the problem envisaged by Senator McDowell exists because this section only applies to the applicant.