Dan Boyle (Cork South Central, Green Party)

Until we have a system that goes beyond this, the slanted interests system will remain in perpetuity.

I would like to respond to some of the criticisms of the Bill, some of which were valid. The point of a Second Stage debate is to accept the concept of a Bill and to let it proceed to Committee Stage, on which amendments can be accepted that will improve the Bill. We propose that ministerial responsibility in this regard should be maintained and it can be further enhanced by the Minister accepting a number of nominations from, what we propose to be, the commission on public appointments and the ultimate selection can be made subsequently, which would be ratified by either a specified Oireachtas committee or an existing committee. That could be teased out on Committee Stage.

I take issue with the point that proposing two methods of assessment and ratification is an over-bureaucratisation of the process. Hundreds of items of legislation govern our systems of public appointments and the approach to it is overly bureaucratic. Our proposals would simplify the system, which is badly in need of simplification.

As regards the notion of people being too exalted in our Republic to be asked to account for themselves in terms of being servants on public bodies, the system could be modified in the sense that people could directly apply by public advertisement or the public advertisement could be phrased in such a way that people could be nominated by the public advertisement to go to the bodies that we propose for their assessment. What we propose is an open system such as that which exists in other jurisdictions. The Minister may not like it now or for the eight weeks remaining of the 29th Dáil but he will have to think hard about this because whatever government replaces the current Government on the benches opposite——

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