I move amendment No. 28: In page 34, to delete lines 1 to 7 and substitute the following: “ Appointments to judicial office in the State: recommended persons to be first considered 51. (1) In advising the President in relation to the appointment of a person to judicial office in the State, the Government shall first consider for appointment those persons who have been recommended by the Commission to the Minister under section 47 . (2) Where the Government advises the President to appoint any person eligible for ap…

These two amendments go to the heart of this legislation. The Government has chosen today to guillotine this debate and to bring it to a close. In effect, this legislation proposes to make it unlawful for the Government of the day to appoint anybody to any judicial office unless that person has been shortlisted by a group of eight people, four of whom are judges and four of whom are laypeople appointed in accordance with this Bill. I want to put the following point on record because people will look at the record o…

I support the motion. I have some sympathy with the Sinn Féin amendment but I think it will take longer than 12 months to get all the ducks in a row to do what is necessary. On the question as to whether further or different legislation is necessary, I want to say that the whole concept of scheduled offences is, and always has been, a slightly dubious one. The relevant provision of the Constitution reads, "Special courts may be established by law for the trial of offences in cases where it may be determined in acco…

It is the opposite. Any case can be sent to the Special Criminal Court.

Yes, and scheduled offences are therefore automatically sent, unless the DPP rules otherwise.

I thank my colleagues for tendering this Bill for consideration by the House. I have a problem with it and I am opposed to the principle of it. Under our Constitution, the greatest honour any of us has is that of being a citizen. There are no grades of citizenship and there is no need for an honours system among citizens. My view is a simple one. Those people in our society who are honoured are recognised by a variety of institutions. Mention was made by Catherine Corless. She has an honorary doctorate from UCD and…

I identify completely with every word the Cathaoirleach, as a good friend of the late Paul Coghlan, has spoken, as well as the words of all of my colleagues. Paul Coghlan was a true gentleman. He had a huge interest in the law, something most people are not aware of. He spent a lot of time in judges' chambers and sitting in courts with judges. He loved the company of lawyers and brought that interest into all of his dealings in the House. I agree with Senator Lombard on the leaving certificate honours maths paper. …

I move amendment No. 1: To delete all words after “That” and substitute the following: “the Bill be read a second time on 31st December, 2023.” I welcome the Minister back to active duty. My amendment would postpone the consideration of Second Stage until the end of the year, but I wish to move it on this basis only, that we should not rush the Bill through. If I have satisfactory assurances that we are not going to rush it through, I do not particularly want to press the amendment at the end of the debate.

I wish to make a number of comments. Senator Ward, in ebullient style, decided to commence his contribution on the basis that most of the criticism of this Bill was nonsense. I do not accept that. While I accept that much of the criticism is nonsense and that many keyboard warriors have written exaggerated and overblown criticisms of the Bill and about its threat to our society, when the Irish Council of Civil Liberties says that there are problems with the Bill that have not yet been addressed, it is not nonsense …

A kinder society and a moral society are not necessarily the same thing. One can be unkind and offensive. Free speech, sometimes, is offensive to other people and people legitimately cause offence and take offence from free speech. A guarantee of free speech without the right to offend has, on many occasions, been described by people across civilisation as worthless. The same applies to minority opinions. This legislation proposes to criminalise some behaviour. In particular, section 7 states that if "the person be…

I welcome the Minister. I have been pressing for this debate for some time and I want to say a few things. When the Garda Reserve was originally canvassed in Dáil Éireann, it received all-party support. The one group that was opposed to it at the time was the Garda Representative Association, GRA. One of its officers said he would be waiting in the long grass for me as a result of establishing it, words that I think were unfortunate at the time. Unfortunately, many members of the reserve found there were people wai…

Not agreed. I want to say one thing. We have had two Ministers in the House today. Not one number has been mentioned to us in the context of how many people it is intended to recruit to the Garda Reserve. That is a shame. I am not agreeable to the adjournment.

Under the rules of the House, I do not think I am entitled to. However, I think it is amazing that I have been campaigning here for two years and not one figure, not even one target, has been mentioned in the course of the afternoon. That is a real shame. I withdraw my objection to the adjournment.

I congratulate the members of the Fine Gael group here today for proposing this Bill and the members of Young Fine Gael for coming up with the legislative plan. Two points occur to me. When I looked at it, I asked myself, looking back at the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act 1997, if it was sufficient. The answer is it is not, and for a number of reasons. It is not sufficient because assault occasioning harm may or may not cover the spiking of a drink or something like that. That is the first point. The sec…

I see a few things I would change.

I second the motion.

I welcome the Minister of State this evening. I welcome the Leas-Chathaoirleach's initiative in establishing sectoral debates for the various university panels. I compliment Senator Higgins on taking the initiative with this particular motion. There is now considerable publicity about the plight of postdoctoral students and the fact they are effectively being exploited by the universities in terms of permanence and pay. I want to deal with a slightly different issue, which is the issue of academic independence. A l…

I want to raise two matters on the Order of Business. The first relates to the Garda Reserve. It seems to me that despite raising this issue on a number of occasions in this House, we have not had a debate on it and we have had no sign of any interest in staging such a debate. The Garda Reserve has dwindled down to practically nothing due to deliberate neglect. Likewise, we discovered the other day in this House that membership of Civil Defence had decreased from 4,500 to less than 2,500 in the last five to seven y…

It is not quite approved, for this reason-----

No, we are not. The Leader spoke about Senator Paul Daly's contribution on wilding one's garden. Ragwort, thistles and dock are twice as beneficial to bees as wildflowers.