Josepha Madigan (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I should have mentioned in my initial response that earlier today, I signed the ministerial approval for the vacancies to go to advertisement. I will give an overview of the process. The vacancies on the board arose in January. A number of legal and interpretation issues arose as the Department was preparing to advertise the vacancies. The process of preparing to make new appointments to State boards requires a reasonable degree of consideration by the boards of State bodies, the Department and the Public Appointments Service. This can take some time. A number of legal and technical issues regarding the process arose in this case but have now been ironed out. The appointments are now ready to be advertised and this should happen shortly. As I said, there are two vacancies for ordinary members of the board of the museum. The Department wrote to the acting director in January and sent a reminder in February.

We requested legal advice in March. We sent another reminder in April. Suffice to say it is now all in situand we should hopefully have those appointments made in a matter of weeks.

See this speech in context