One name is always brought to the Cabinet and the Cabinet decides on that one name which is brought by the Minister for Justice. I do not understate the importance of the recommendation of the Judicial Appointments Advisory Board, which made a recommendation that Mr. Justice Woulfe be appointed to the Supreme Court as a suitable candidate.

It made that recommendation on 9 March. That board is chaired by the Chief Justice and includes among its members the presidents of four courts.

That is a significant body of opinion to recommend a candidate as being suitable for the Supreme Court. I accept that the overall situation needs to be reformed, which is why the Government will shortly bring forward the Judicial Appointments Commission Bill. We will make amendments to the legislation that was piloted through the House by the former Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Shane Ross. At the time, I believed that the balance in the context of that legislation was wrong. The Government is of the o…

My overarching objective in the context of this entire situation, and in particular the publication of letters between the Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Woulfe has been to uphold separation of powers between the Oireachtas and the Judiciary. I take that very seriously.

That has been my motivation from the beginning in the handling of this issue and was the motivation behind my statement to the House last week on this issue and it remains my overarching objective. I have not seen in the past in this House Ministers answering questions about specific judicial appointments.

That said, the Minister, Deputy McEntee, is prepared to come in and answer questions on process as part of her normal questions.

Is it beyond the Deputy’s capacity to take questions?

Just because Deputy Kelly shouts louder than others sometimes does not mean that he is right. That type of browbeating does not work with me Deputy Kelly.

I make the point and I have made it repeatedly, Mr. Justice Woulfe was appointed appropriately in accordance with the Constitution and with the law and of that there is no doubt. If one reads the Cabinet Handbook it states that very clearly.

My first point is that we should stand back from creating unnecessary rows and tensions between public health advice, Government decisions and the views of the Oireachtas. I accept that people have different perspectives on Covid-19 and the steps we must take to keep the virus down, open up society and relax restrictions. We should never question the good faith of people on all sides, particularly in the public health realm and NPHET, whose fundamental objective is to protect lives and public health. We should not …

At a cost, yes. I accept that. It is a big cost but the Irish people are adhering and it is working. We would like the figures to be lower. I would prefer them to be lower again. They are still coming down. Last evening, the 14-day incidence per 100,000 was 108.7. Finland is ahead of us, with about 50 per 100,000. Other European countries are in a much more difficult space. The big challenge for us as decision-makers in the Oireachtas is that what we do will pose risks as we move into December. There will be risks …

I thank the Deputy. I do not disagree with him on the utilisation of data to inform decision-making. That is important. Various sets of data can inform decisions. The Deputy is correct in saying there have been outbreaks in certain healthcare settings, which has been problematic for those settings in dealing with the normal throughput, services and so forth. To inform our decisions, our approach is based on analysing data. Without question, I believe I am safe in saying that, after level 3, the decision to restrict…

I accept the Deputy's overall point about preparation and the need to prepare. Decisions will be made and announced by the Government in time for various sectors and actors to prepare in response to a Government announcement this week. I made it very clear five weeks ago that there would be a six-week application of level 5. I made it very clear in the first press conference that our objective was to arrive back at level 3 and see what we could do around that, depending on where the numbers were. My focus has been …

First of all, in terms of mechanisms and so on, we have made many public statements. People have tracked the status of the virus over the last number of weeks in terms of numbers coming down. When we reopened after the first lockdown - go right through the summer into September and October - restrictions were lifted and certain things happened, notwithstanding all the dialogue in the world. All of the Deputies know this in terms of certain locations, certain events. It is not a secret how spikes happened in certain…

The Deputy should be glad.

I am not.

I have answered questions on this on a number of occasions.

I have answered questions, and I have answered them straight. I want to say, through the Chair if I may, that I have made it clear that it has all been laid out in terms of how the appointment was made. There was no horse trading involved. There was no involvement whatsoever in terms of judicial appointments, the formation of the Government or the programme for Government. Any assertion to the contrary is false. The Deputy can make all the accusations he likes. Just because he makes them does not mean they are corr…

I know what I signed up to and what I did not sign up to. The proof of the pudding is that I followed the Judicial Appointments Advisory Board's recommendation in terms of the suitability of the candidate so that I would not-----

-----embroil myself in judicial appointments.