Niall Collins (Limerick West, Fianna Fail)

I welcome the opportunity to partake in this debate. I followed it last night and listened to the contributions this evening which have been informative, and credit should be extended to Deputy Varadkar. His intent is genuine, good and non-political. There is no doubt that in today's age of openness, transparency and accountability the public demand openness in terms of appointing people to our State boards. Equally, to maintain a balance, I do not know of any Minister who appointed a person to a board knowing he or she had the intention of doing a bad job. Also, many people have been appointed to State boards throughout the years who have done very fine work. Such people have been fine public servants who served the public interest above and beyond the call of duty and we should all acknowledge as much. Obviously, there have been examples of actions which were not up to standard and they have been discussed, debated, reviewed and investigated by many committees and other agencies.

In terms of how we vet people, it is worth considering the Judicial Appointments Advisory Board which vets the people nominated to Government for appointment to the Judiciary. Such a model is workable and credible and people's credentials, qualifications and suitability for appointments may be assessed and then processed. The Standards in Public Office Commission should have a positive role to play in this regard.

Much enabling legislation which comes before the House disbars Deputies and Senators from sitting on the boards of agencies, which is correct. We should, however, go one step further. Local authority members should be also disbarred because local government has become a very busy place. Those working in the sector are paid public representatives. A representative may have 12 official local authority meetings in one year but there are many other meetings which take the form of briefing sessions. The prohibition on Deputies and Members of the Seanad should also apply to local authority members.

We should consider putting a cap on the number of appointments a person may hold in State agencies. We all receive the annual reports as they land on our desks via the postman. There are instances of people who seem to appear on the boards of many State agencies. We must critically examine this and possibly impose a cap on the number of positions an individual may hold. We must also appraise the role of civil servants on boards. There is an increasing trend whereby several State agencies have one or a number of civil servants on their boards. We should flesh out this matter because these people have a responsibility as a member of a given board. However, when something takes place the role of such people is not to become the eyes and ears of the Department because such people are bound by board confidentiality. We must examine the role of civil servants because the chief accounting officer reports to the Department and the chairperson of a board reports to the Minister. Why, therefore, are there so many civil servants on boards? I am not saying we should not have any in such positions but we should examine the matter.

We should also examine the age of appointees to boards. There is a retirement age of 65 years within the civil and public service for a reason. A Government decision dating from the 1970s precludes people more than 70 years of age from being appointed to State boards. I am not being ageist and I am not suggesting it is right or wrong, but in the light of equality legislation we should examine the matter. I refer to the issue of gender. There is a minimum female gender requirement of 40%. We should consider moving to a 50-50 requirement, or at least to have the 40% threshold upheld, because it is not upheld in all areas.

With appointments to State boards where a group structure exists, the original appointee is often a director on subsidiary companies and when the term expires on the parent group company, the member often remains as board director of subsidiary companies ad infinitum. That should be examined. There is good intent in this discussion as there are many anomalies that should be considered.

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