Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein)

The Minister has mentioned that there is a strong workers' representative on the board and there is a strong employer representative on the board. I do not dispute that for a moment. It is clear we do not need to insulate the legislation against the current Minister but imagine there was a Minister who was not disposed towards doing that so the representatives would not necessarily be there to speak for the people who were members of the scheme. It does cause a lot of problems when there are people who feel they are paying into a scheme from which they are excluded about how it is managed. The amendment is well intentioned. It is a good idea to cement that kind of representation into legislation. It was always done previously. It ceased in recent times but it was a practice. The value is there for the people who are going to be the voice of the workers and the employers; the people paying in and the people administering it. I cannot understand what the objection to this amendment is and it seems to me that it always is a good thing when those who are members of a scheme also are involved in it. That is generally a good thing with pensions. The Minister is lucky there are people queuing up to be involved in the board because sometimes it can be very tough to get people to be involved. The Minister has people who are enthusiastic but the people who are members of the scheme would have a marginal rate of interest in having some involvement in how that scheme is managed.