Appointment of Woulfe leapfrogged judge vetting system
An advisory body existed to help avoid insider judicial appointments, but on this occasion it was ignored
The coalition government scrapped an existing system for vetting judicial appointments when it chose to put Seamus Woulfe, the former attorney general, onto the Supreme Court.
The appointment of a previous attorney general, Máire Whelan, to a senior judicial position in 2017 had caused controversy. Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin, then in opposition, described it in the Dáil as “an insider appointment that stinks to high heaven”.
The Fine Gael minority government commissioned a review ...