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Helen McAbsEntee, Minister of Justice, will not appear before the Dáil anytime soon to answer questions about the role she played in selecting our new Supreme Court Justice.
Which is a shame, although not for the government.
Relentless pressure from the opposition to answer questions on the issue prompted the minister to use a safe space Tuesday afternoon to publicly explain how the decision was reached.
But McAbsEntee failed to defuse the situation, instead managing to keep alive the latent controversy over the appointment of Séamus Woulfe to the highest court in the country.
With this in mind, perhaps the Taoiseach was right in insisting earlier that it would be highly inappropriate to bring a Minister of Justice to the Chamber to say why the Government selected a particular judge.
You wouldn’t have been allowed to get away with just the shortest statements (no questions asked) at the end of an Oireachtas committee meeting on the 2020 Supplemental Estimates for Public Services.
Another political dispute
After the Golfgate calamity, it is unfortunate that former Attorney General Woulfe finds himself at the center of yet another political dispute, this time related to the way he was appointed to the Supreme Court.
Had he not attended the infamous Covid-contaminated 19th hole dinner in Connemara in August, Woulfe would have settled anonymously in his new job at the Four Courts with his fellow legal universe teachers.
With his judicial peers unable to promptly or commensurately deal with his colleague, and politicians understandably unwilling to accept a hospital pass from judges seeking to solve the problem, it seemed like the Woulfe saga was finally coming to an end.
Having been attorney general in Leo Varadkar’s government before Leo smoothly progressed to Tánaiste in the Micheál Martin Coalition, lead attorney Séamus floated on Fine Gael’s wings to the Supreme Court even though his striped butt never grazed the judge’s bench in a lower court.
A routine lift that has the stamp of government business as usual. It’s the way they do things on Merrion Street, between pious episodes of promises to change our political system of appointing judges.
Every day the Taoiseach says in the mirror “I am Taoiseach, Leo is Tánaiste. I am Taoiseach, Leo is Tánaiste. I am Tánaiste, Leo is Taoiseach … Aaw fuck them ”.
On Tuesday, when the Taoiseach strongly defended Minister McAbsEntee’s right not to appear before her fellow TDs to explain how the “expressions of interest” of three other sitting judges were not shared with the Cabinet, opposition deputies reminded her time he criticized the appointment of another former attorney general to another fierce big job in the peak hierarchy.
He could not deny that he enthusiastically surrendered when, as leader of the opposition, he criticized then-Taoiseach Varadkar for the controversial appointment of outgoing Attorney General Máire Whelan to the Court of Appeal when she had not even applied for the position.
When Varadkar told him during a stormy Dáil session that Fianna Fáil appointed current Chief Justice Frank Clarke to the Superior Court bypassing the Judicial Appointments Advisory Board (JAAB) and put Donal O’Donnell and the late Adrian Hardiman in the Supreme Court. Court, Martin raged: “Máire Whelan is not Frank Clarke. Máire Whelan is not Adrian Hardiman “.
Jim O’Callaghan of Fianna Fáil, who is a senior attorney, stated on a radio show that “there will be consequences.”
Whelan Episode
This latest dispute with Woulfe’s issue of judicial appointments is not comparable to Whelan’s episode, the Taoiseach told Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald, who wasted no time reminding her that she “had no problem attacking” the appointment of a prosecutor. previous general.
Alan Kelly, from Labor, told Martin that he was “afraid” to introduce the Minister of Justice in the Dáil to resolve the opposition’s doubts about the form of the appointment.
Catherine Murphy of the Social Democrats assumed that a candidate’s “inexperience would be questioned” and was struggling to understand the news that three justices had also run, but the Taoiseach did not realize this when they discussed the work of the Supreme Court with Minister McAbsEntee.
The Taoiseach thought it was all a storm in a cup of tea. Hadn’t the JAAB recommended a candidate? That was good enough for him. However, the other three did not run through the advisory board but through the attorney general’s office. Their names were reportedly forwarded to the Department of Justice and filed away, as the Donegal Catch man would put it, “a kyabinet filing cabinet.”
All very interesting. But Martin insists that the Minister of Justice cannot enter the Dáil to discuss this because it would constitute a serious violation of the principle of separation of powers.
Leading authority
And don’t talk to Martin about the separation of powers. Since taking over as Taoiseach, he has become a leading authority on the matter.
Every day he says in the mirror “I am Taoiseach, Leo is Tánaiste. I am Taoiseach, Leo is Tánaiste. I am Tánaiste, Leo is Taoiseach. . . Aaw fuck it. “
Did you really have to close the doors to any conversation about dating?
Especially when none other than an authority Ceann Comhairle deemed a discussion of the selection process permissible once DTs did not “drift into the area of personal fitness that would reflect on any individual who has been selected.”
Mary Lou and Alan Kelly had no intention of letting the matter rest. As it stands, the Taoiseach and Eamon Ryan, the leader of the Greens, were not informed of the “expressions of interest” when they discussed the appointment with Tánaiste Varadkar and the Minister before the Cabinet meeting that sealed the submitted name. . This is nothing unusual, it is always only one name.
But it appears that Varadkar may have been aware of the three interested judges who are now on file in a filing kyabinet. At the Cabinet’s weekly briefing with political correspondents Tuesday night, this spokesperson was asked whether, unlike Martin and Ryan, he knew of the three stakeholders.
Could not comment
The spokesperson said he could not comment as the process was confidential.
Here’s what Minister McAbsEntee said in her short statement (she could have told Dáil) after her appearance before the committee: “I looked at the recommendation that had been made and other expressions of interest that often come up for any of these positions. After that, I spoke with the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste, Minister Ryan and the Attorney General and based on that a recommendation was made and the Cabinet was given a name. Only one name is given to the Cabinet. “
But it appears that he did not tell two of the people in his pre-Cabinet meeting about the other three applicants. Did you tell Varadkar, your boss?
“I guarantee you this won’t go away,” Kelly said.
Justice for the Three Judicials.
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