Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

I have many friends who, with the greatest respect, lack the knowledge, expertise and experience to serve on boards. The number of those people whom one would appoint is limited, and there is none in my Department because I would not have people involved in certain technical areas such as statistics. However, there are people whom I consider friends with knowledge, experience and expertise and whom I trust, believing that they would give the necessary time and commitment to the task, and those people I would appoint. If I did not believe that they had that expertise or the patriotic sense of being able to give fulsomely of their time, I would not appoint them.

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