Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

As Deputy Fleming rightly said, he has proposed a long new section on the appointment of the Secretary General. The first part is a replication of the status quo. The position is that the Clerk of the Dáil is the Secretary General and we outlined on Second Stage, in some detail, the array of functions that the Secretary General of the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission has.

Two different issues arise from this amendment. One is that leaders or designated leaders of groups or parties in either House of the Oireachtas who are not represented on the membership of the commission at that time be consulted. I would not have an objection to that but I am trying to tease out how that would work. What we are doing is providing for a formal appointment system whereby the job would be advertised in an open way, people would apply for it and the Top Level Appointments Committee, TLAC, which, as Members know, now consists of a majority of external members, would do the interviews, do the short-listing and make the recommendation. I wonder where the consultation would come in. The Ceann Comhairle would make a recommendation to the commission and it would make the decision. It would be better if the groups the Deputy mentioned were formally represented on the commission as opposed to having some sort of undefined consultative role. What would that consultation mean other than telling them about it? There would be no real role for them other than that.

As I explained in some detail, because I greatly respect the independence of Parliament from the Executive, I do not believe I should be prescriptive, as a member of the Executive, about the exact composition of the commission but I am supportive of broadening the membership of it. I know there is a further amendment on this but I do not think I should be the one to make that determination; that should be part of the debate within the Houses of the Oireachtas. It probably will not impact on the current Dáil but it should on the next Dáil in terms of the composition of the commission.

I do not believe that this fairly nebulous consultation role is fit for purpose and it would be confusing in terms of a legal appointment process. What I am trying to do is to have a process which mirrors the process by which a Secretary General of a Department is appointed where there is an open competition, a TLAC interviewing process, a short-list, a recommendation to a Minister and the Minister bringing his or her recommended person's name to Cabinet. That is the way it is done.

Has a vote been called in the Dáil?