Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will not dignify this contrived and shambolic attempt to occupy the moral high ground with a response of any great length. I was named yesterday by Deputy Finian McGrath as someone who had used a "get-out clause to make appointments". I want to make some points in reply to that charge.

They do not have a party Whip in Deputy Finian McGrath's new group, but the Independent Alliance should make some effort to agree to have a line. I am generally loath to betray the confidence of a conversation with a fellow Member of the Oireachtas, but I will make an exception in this case. Yesterday, around the time Deputy Finian McGrath was sharpening his crayon to frame a limp attack on me and the Tánaiste, his colleague in the Seanad, Senator Feargal Quinn, who has the misfortune of being chairman of the Independent Alliance, personally congratulated me on choosing Dr. Nael Bunni as the first chairman of the construction contracts adjudication panel. As the author of the original Construction Contracts Bill, the Senator naturally had a very keen interest in seeing his measure passed and implemented. I recall that he told me that he knew Dr. Bunni and that I could not have made a better choice to serve as chairman. The Senator has an advantage over me because prior to appointing him, I did not know Dr. Bunni at all. I make no apology for not waiting for a possible application and instead proactively head-hunting and approaching the individual whose CV and track record made him best suited to chair this new body. I prefer the Senator's sound judgment on the merits of my appointment to Deputy Finian McGrath's ignorant and churlish comments. He and his colleagues in the so-called Independent Alliance - the party that is not a party - really are the rebels without a clue.

I am happy to confirm that I adopted exactly the same approach when it came to seeking another chairman for another new body I established - the Low Pay Commission. A politician or political commentator would have to be woefully or perhaps wilfully misinformed to think Dr. Donal de Buitléir, chairman of the Low Pay Commission, is a crony of mine or of my party. That is just mischievous nonsense aimed at the gullible and the uninformed. What is important to know about Dr. de Buitléir is that he is a former senior civil servant, a former president of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, a former chairman of the Foundation for Fiscal Studies, the former secretary to the Commission on Taxation and that he has served with distinction as a member of a number of review groups for successive Governments in the areas of local government reform, the integration of the tax and welfare systems, business regulation, health funding and higher education. I can think of no individual better qualified to take on the task of serving as midwife to this new body which has performed its tasks extremely well. It is composed of representatives from both sides of industry and independent experts in labour market economics and statistical analysis. Furthermore, I can confirm that the members of these bodies all came through the Public Appointments Service process. I strongly believe I was both entitled and obliged, as Minister of State, to make sure the best candidate would be available to serve as chairman. I approached Dr. de Buitléir directly and asked him to serve. In the language of the guidelines governing this process which the Deputies opposite seem reluctant to use I "independently identified a person who is evidently and objectively highly-qualified and capable of effectively discharging the role of chair".

The Independent Alliance's choice of subject matter for this Dáil debate does nothing more than highlight how little it has to state that is worth hearing. One can give Deputy Shane Ross great credit for a lot of things, but he has never let consistency stand in the way of his instinct for noisy populist guff. Consistency in his thinking is not an attribute we are entitled to expect from the man who constantly criticised the Bank of Ireland as a conservative establishment and asked why it could not be more like the get-up-and-go Irish Nationwide Building Society and the anti-establishment Anglo Irish Bank. He was the cheerleader for these banks and their chief executives, week after week in his Sunday column, as he breathlessly celebrated their enormous profits, at our expense as it turned out. This same man is also on record as calling Sean Quinn a genius, the champion of the customer, describing Quinn Direct as the most successful insurance business in Ireland and positively welcoming the massive Quinn share purchases in Anglo Irish Bank. The House does not need to be reminded that that particular farrago did not end well. It is just a pity that the national parliament has to devote time to dealing with such a false and trumped up charge from these publicity seeking, self-preening opinionisers whose only common platform is the need to have one.

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