Jonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister made a number of appointments to the board of Bord na Móna last week. It is widely recognised that at least two of those appointments were influenced by the political affiliations of the individuals involved.

In addition, the Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael Noonan, recently appointed a long-serving Fine Gael activist to the board of NAMA. Even the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Deputy Jimmy Deenihan, got in on the act when he appointed a failed Labour Party councillor to the board of the Irish Museum of Modern Art. In yet another betrayal of the electorate, both Fine Gael and Labour Party Ministers are blatantly and unashamedly engaging in acts of cronyism by way of their appointments to State boards.

When this Government took office, we were promised a new way of doing politics that would be open, transparent and accountable. In fact, we were promised no less than a democratic revolution. In reality, what we are seeing with these appointments, none of which was done through the Public Appointments Service, is the same old tired politics of this Administration's predecessors. This is true not only in the area of appointments to State boards but also in the way Ministers have favoured funding for their own constituencies and how the establishment of the banking inquiry was handled, with the Government making sure it had a majority. All of this goes to show that nothing has changed since the previous Government.

See this speech in context