Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Amendment No. 12 seeks to remove the complicated series of provisions in the Bill to ensure that if a person who was originally appointed or elected by the Judicial Council was, say, a barrister when that person was appointed, and was a female or a male as the case may be, that the same criteria should apply to any person who is appointed subsequently, and I refer to section 12(6) which states:

Where a judge, appointed under this section, ceases to be a member of the Commission ... the Judicial Council shall nominate a judge— ... of the same gender as the judge who ceases to be a member ...of the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal or the High Court.

That provision is ridiculous, to be honest. If you think about it, the Judicial Council may elect a member of the Supreme Court to be a member of the judicial appointments commission. That person may have been chosen by virtue of their talent and yet now we are being told that if that person was a female or a male as the case may be, their replacement has to be of the same gender. I am not going to go down the road of discussing gender.