Judicial jiggery-pokery leaves poor Leo reeling over Whelan

World of Politics with Harry McGee – harrymcgee@gmail.com

They talk about the separation of powers between the different arms of Government – but given the tenor of the row that has erupted over judicial appointments in the past week, it’s more a divorce than a separation. And an acrimonious one at that with, at last count, at least six protagonists – including Maire Whelan, Leo Varadkar, Enda Kenny, Shane Ross, Micheal Martin and the entire judiciary.

It all began with Maire Whelan, after outgoing Taoiseach Enda Kenny was caught on the hop when Leo Varadkar announced he was going to bring in his own Attorney General, Seamus Woulfe.

Whelan was a Labour appointment to the 2011 government but over that Government’s term she had become very close to Kenny.

We can assume she indicated she did not want to go back into private practice – hence the Government’s revival of a tradition that departing A-Gs were appointed directly to the High Court or Supreme Court, if they so wished.

And it meant, as Clare Senator Martin Conway put it, that Kenny’s parting gift to Varadkar as he walked out the door was a political landmine.

Varadkar’s first week was spent facing Opposition taunts that his Government had essentially pulled a ‘fast one’ and bypassed established procedures to facilitate the departing law officer for the Government.

It is true that the Government has reserved powers to appoint a candidate to the Courts and can bypass the Judicial Appointments Advisory Board (JAAB), the vehicle set up in 1995 to essentially regularise the appointment of judges.

But that approach has two inherent weakness. The ‘entitled to’ is no longer as politically acceptable as it was – and, in any event, the JAAB has become really well established.

In the 22 years since the enactment of the Court and Court Officres Act 1995, there have several hundred of appointments made through the JAAB process.

The JAAB appoints nobody. It will give the Government a list of suitable names for each position. It is the Government which makes the ultimate call on who gets what job.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.