Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Taking on board some of the points made by Deputy O'Callaghan, we will press our amendments Nos. 25 and 26. I want to concentrate on the last points concerning our amendment No. 38 and its intention to delete that lay members of the commission would have knowledge of the "processes and procedures for making appointments to public office or to senior positions in public or private sector organisations", as well as the Minister's attempt to reinsert what the committee voted down, reinstating "board membership and corporate governance" as some of the skills that lay people might possess. We think it is critical that amendment No. 38 be accepted and amendment No. 41 be voted down.

I will give a relatively recent example where similar criteria were laid down in terms of board membership, corporate governance and public sector administration, as these were already included as two of the four matters that the Public Appointments Service must have regard to when selecting commissioners for IHREC in accordance with section 13(5) of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission Act 2014. As a result of those two clauses, in a recent competition for IHREC commissioners by the Public Appointments Service, we had the exclusion from even an interview of Michael Farrell, the eminently qualified senior solicitor with FLAC, a lifelong social justice campaigner and a human rights consultant. He could not even get an interview for that panel because of those criteria being in place.

We have all made huge points to the effect that, if we want lay involvement to represent society as a whole, we do not want to have cloned versions of politicians, civil servants and big business. We want real diversity and of the two amendments, one must be passed and the other defeated if we are to have the necessary balance.

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