Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)

As Senators are aware, it is Government policy to seek to have a minimum of 40% of State boards made up of members of each gender. Unfortunately, it is not always possible to achieve this objective given the pool of persons available to serve on particular boards, which varies between sectors. While I accept that criticism can be levelled at the Government in that in some sectors in which there is a degree of availability, the target has not always been reached, financial services is a particularly difficult sector. The current Central Bank and Financial Services Authority of Ireland board has one female member while the ten person IFSRA board has two female members.

In general, the Minister's view is that while he will try to ensure adequate representation of both genders on boards for which he is the appointing Minister, he cannot accept the prescriptive approach suggested by these amendments, given the many other factors he must take into account when making appointments.

The Senator has raised an important issue, of which I have been very conscious as Minister of State. I have endeavoured in my office to have equality of representation but in my limited experience as Minister of State I have found that any prescription on the appointment of a board can lead to more difficulties than the Legislature envisages.

As regards the appointment of boards, I accept that for a long time the criticism has been voiced that where Ministers are left with wide discretion the wrong people tend to be appointed or persons who should not be appointed are slipped in. The difficulty is that when one writes limitations into law, one narrows dramatically the capacity to appoint good persons to boards. While the Government has a stated policy in this area, it is undesirable to fetter Ministers too much in legislation. The most important issue in this regard is that they must ultimately be responsible for their appointments.