Ciarán Cuffe (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)

We will talk to Deputy Ring outside. I welcome the Fine Gael contribution to the debate on public appointments but I regret that the Bill is limited in its ambitions.

On a personal note I give credit to Deputy Varadkar for the good work he has done in bringing transparency to the operations of his own office in terms of his role as a Deputy. I would be delighted if his colleagues within the Fine Gael Party would bring the same level of transparency to their allowances and expenses as he does on his website. I give him credit for that.

The problem with the Bill before us is that, in essence, the Fine Gael Bill retains the "who one knows" aspect of public appointments. That is the devil in the detail. It is that very issue we want to move away from. The Fine Gael Bill only addresses the larger State bodies and agencies. Under the model it proposes the Oireachtas acts as a rubber stamp for ministerial appointments. The Fine Gael Bill does not give the power to the Oireachtas to nominate persons to boards, merely to approve them. It will not remove political patronage and it will not open up membership of State boards to qualified and talented persons from outside the political system, namely those with no connections to political parties or lobby groups.

The real flaw in the Fine Gael Bill is that it does not address the issue of diversity in our State boards, both of background and of skills. On the other hand, the Green Party in government has already begun to make fundamental change to how appointments to boards are made. As part of the Broadcasting Act 2009, my colleague, the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Deputy Ryan, has ensured that the Oireachtas has an essential role in nominating members to the Broadcasting Authority. Unlike the proposal in the Fine Gael Bill, the Oireachtas committee will nominate half of the members of the board, and not merely approve them. The Green Party has already gone far beyond what Fine Gael is proposing in the Bill. The Green Party in government will build on that innovation.

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