Brian Hayes (Fine Gael)

I move amendment No. 9:

In page 16, subsection (2), line 4, to delete "in the Civil Service of the State".

This has been a rather fallow afternoon for Opposition Senators, but the Minister may choose to accept these amendments. The wording of this section is an example of verbiage, which the Minister does not like. Section 14(2) states, "a member of the staff of the Ombudsman shall be a civil servant in the Civil Service of the State." I am not aware of any civil servant who is not a civil servant of the State, although someone may be able to point out such a civil servant to me. We need to remove such verbiage. I propose that section 14 (2) be amended so that it states, "a member of the staff of the Ombudsman shall be a civil servant."

I have tabled amendment No. 10 because I believe that, like amendment No. 9, it gives greater definition to the Bill. I propose to delete section 14(5), which states, "In this section "civil servant in the Civil Service of the State" means a person holding a position in the Civil Service of the State"." That is inconsistent with section 36 of the Civil Defence Act 2002, from which I have taken the wording of my amendment No. 10, which proposes to replace the words to be deleted with, "in this section 'civil servant' means a person appointed within the meaning of the Civil Service Regulation Act 1956." I think the Minister can give way on this issue because my wording is much clearer and cuts out the verbiage.