Judicial Appointments Commission Bill 2022: Committee Stage (Resumed)
Seanad Éireann — 2023-03-07
============================================================

Michael McDowell (IND), National University of Ireland

We are amending the Judicial Council Act. There is a clear typo in that Act, which the amendment I tabled was designed to deal with. At present, subsection 50(4) of the Judicial Council Act 2019 states: "A complaint may be made under subsection (1) on behalf of ... a member of the [Bar] Council ... by a duly authorised officer of the General Council of the Bar". That was just a mistake; it was meant to state "barrister" and not just "member of the Bar Council", which would be about 20 people. I raised the matter informally at the time and was told the Department proposed to deal with it in other legislation. Bearing in mind what Senator Ward said, at the time it looked like this unconstitutional juggernaut would proceed without any amendment in this House-----

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2023-03-07/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:51:39+00:00
Sitting date: 2023-03-07