I move amendment No. 1:—
In page 2, to delete subsection (2) and substitute the following new subsection:
"(2) The Minister may nominate a judge of the Circuit Court or a practising barrister of at least ten years' standing to examine the records of the investigation by the Referce of an application to which this section applies and, upon such examination, the judge or barrister, if satisfied that the Referee made an error in setting out his findings in his report on the application, may, with the concurrence of two of the members of the Advisory Committee who assisted the Referee in the investigation, correct the error and the report as so corrected shall be regarded as the report of the Referee on the application."
I am accepting, in principle, the amendment which Deputy MacEoin suggests. I thought I had explained to the satisfaction of any reasonable person that, far from interfering with the Referee's decision, I was actually taking steps to implement the findings of the Referee, and this section, as originally drafted, was merely intended to do that.
These mistakes were discovered and reported to me by the officers of my Department in the normal course of their duties. It is true that I could have washed my hands at that stage and said the Referee reported in a negative manner in those two cases and there was nothing more to be said. I thought that would not be fair to the people concerned, and that I should do something to rectify what were obviously clerical errors. I originally considered doing what Deputy MacEoin suggests, but I decided it was an unnecessarily cumbersome way to rectify clerical errors. I decided the way proposed in this Bill in the first instance was the best way to deal with the matter. However, if it will make Deputy MacEoin any happier, I am now prepared to do it in the way he suggests.
The subsection which I propose, differs from the amendment proposed by Deputy MacEoin, in the following respects. Instead of the words "barrister-at-law of at least five years' standing" used in Deputy MacEoin's amendment, I am using the expression "practising barrister of at least 10 years' standing". Those are the words used in Section 5 of the Military Service Pensions Act, 1934, and are, therefore, more appropriate. That was the Act which originally set up the Referee. In any case the qualifications for a man in order to become a Circuit Court judge are that he is a "practasing barrister of at least 10 years' standing." It would not be proper for us to start to equate a Circuit Court judge and a barrister of five years' standing.
I am using the expression "nominate" instead of "appoint" and there is a re-phrasing of the original subsection as a result of the proposed change, but I think the effect of the amendment is what Deputy MacEoin wants.
