John Gormley (Dublin South East, Green Party)

I am sharing time with Deputies Cuffe and Boyle. I commend Deputy Boyle for drafting this legislation. Two of my colleagues won awards this evening for best politician and best TD, Deputies Sargent and Eamon Ryan. Deputy Boyle deserved to get something, but perhaps next year when he is serving in Government he will get an award.

I very much welcome the opportunity to speak on this legislation. I listened earlier, briefly, to Deputy O'Connor. He is a fine guy and I get on with him, but he said something which caught my attention, namely, that he was appointed to various boards simply because he was an active member of the community. I am sure he is a very active member of the community and he reminds the House all the time what he does for Tallaght. However, I believe that is not the only reason he was appointed. His links to Fianna Fáil were another very good reason for his appointments to boards. It is clear that board appointments are regarded as the spoils of war after an election.

I know this from my experience on Dublin City Council when the Green Party had the opportunity to be a minor player at local government level when we formed a coalition with Fine Gael, the Labour Party and independent councillors. We had the opportunity then to select people for board membership and we did that. The point that has been made here is relevant. We discovered that it sometimes was difficult to get people, particularly when the position was not remunerated. However, if a position is paid well, many people would like such a placement and while the Minister might say that at all times he acted in the public interest, if he is to be absolutely honest, I am sure he knows of people on boards and wondered why, in God's name, they were appointed. Too often the reason for such appointments is that they know someone.

That is the difficultly. As a result of that, as I have discussed with many colleagues in Opposition, Fianna Fáil has this wonderful network throughout the country of people it has appointed. Even when it is out of Government and in Opposition, it has key people all over the place. It has this very powerful network at all levels of the community. It never ceases to amaze me when fine people pop up and then at election time one sees them canvassing with Fianna Fáil. I am not saying——

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