Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 41:

In page 19, subsection (5), line 39, to delete “the Minister given with the consent of”.

The proposed amendments to sections 21 and 27 are part of a suite of amendments aimed at removing ministerial influence, or any perception of ministerial influence, over the authority, while retaining a role for the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform with a view to helping to control the costs of the authority, which are to be recouped through the levy on legal practitioners.
Each of the amendments deals with the giving of ministerial consent for a variety of issues. They reflect the standard architecture for other bodies in the legislation that existed when the original Bill was being drafted. It was never the Government's intention that this would be a body controlled in any shape or form by the Minister of the day. As members will be aware, there were concerns that such a perception had developed. The amendments delete references to the authority requiring a variety of what are clearly unnecessary ministerial consents, which gave rise to the wrong perception.