Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I understand the logic behind what the Minister of State has said. It was never intended to be in the gift of one party or another to be able to appoint a person to a board. The appointments could be made by way of a lottery of those in a council who were interested who could serve for a single term only and so on. It does not have to be political. Local authority members are not paid at the rate at which they should be. They are not Deputies or Senators who can influence legislation; they are ordinary citizens who often have a huge wealth of expertise and knowledge. Despite the fact that their jobs are not full-time, they are being excluded from potentially playing a vital or beneficial role on a children's hospital board, which is strange. I can understand the logic behind excluding Deputies and MEPs and I am not arguing that they be considered, but we should not be ruling out people just because they work part-time as councillors. Some of them work full-time, but they are not paid for it. There could be a retired paediatric doctor who is also a councillor whose expertise would be vital and he or she could be asked to choose between being a councillor representing his or her local community and city and taking up membership of the board. I do not think we should be turning down expertise in the form of, say, the best manager of a company in the world on the basis that he or she is an elected representative. In this case, it is wrong to refuse such expertise.

See this speech in context