Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

As I have said, there are many people who act on State boards, some in the singular and some in the plural who have shown and displayed not only a strong commitment to public service, but a strong competence and professionalism and have brought these particular attributes to the fore in respect of their involvement in State boards throughout the years. Among the requirements for appointment to a board with a major role are financial management and accountancy skills, and familiarity with procedures in that area. Those are prerequisites for any role in corporate governance. Many people — I will not go into the specifics — have displayed all these attributes through their business experiences as executives running organisations, which they bring to bear beneficially in non-executive capacities. Non-executive board members of any organisation require and depend on the papers provided to them by executives in order to ask questions or inquire into any policy directive or initiative consistent with the strategic direction set out by the board.

One cannot make the assumptions the Deputy makes regarding some of the matters still under investigation. Let the investigation point it out and bring it to the fore in due course based on the facts. The Deputy asks for a non-judgmental approach but the best way to achieve that is to consider the performance of the executives within the organisations they serve. It remains a matter for individual board members to indicate whether they are no longer in a position to serve for personal or professional reasons. I am sure they take that into account in determining the length of their tenure on any of these boards.

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