Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I have just consulted the official. There will be the elected councillors - ten accountable people with a clear democratic mandate. There will be two parents' representatives and two staff representatives with a clear focus and mandate. Those 14 people will co-opt the remaining people to bring it up to 18. There is a fair degree of balance and counterbalance in that composition. The legitimacy of the staff and parents' representatives is self-evident and the democratic ballot box has given legitimacy to the ten members.

We could say that those 14 members will have to appoint people for specific areas, including learner, business, etc., from a list nominated by chambers of commerce, NALA and others. The person would need to come through the first hoop of being acceptable to a chamber of commerce or to the IBEC committee and then ultimately the decision would be made by the 14 based on local knowledge. The learner representative would clearly need to have experience of NALA or some other body. We cannot have just one body but would have to involve other bodies. It comes through that filter - that first selection process - and then ultimately again to return the democratic legitimacy to that group of 14 people to choose one person from a list of, for example, three, rather than giving an organisation automatic rights to nominate somebody to the ET board simply because it is listed.

That is my thinking. We might reflect on it. For procedural reasons on Report Stage we do not have the option of having this kind of dialogue. I am quite open to having an informal discussion on what we want to do in this area so that when we come to Report Stage, there is consensus on it. The importance of this legislation is not that it is somebody's political triumph but that it has democratic consensus.