Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

With regard to Senator Ryan's question, the wording is drafted in accordance with legal advice. I am not sure it is a positive development but we have become technocratic about procedures. I am always reminded of a version I saw of the play, "A Man For All Seasons", in which a commentator represented the common person. It is important that boards are not peopled with appointees who have PhDs, DLits, DScs and so on. They are fine people in their own right but sometimes they lack a feel for issues on the ground. We have probably gone from one extreme to the other in this regard in recent years.

Appointing boards is tricky. I will soon appoint two new boards and it is always a difficult process. I try to consider many criteria such as gender balance, which is important. Certain boards need a geographic balance or a skills balance or, sometimes, a linguistic balance. However, the most fundamental element is the likely contribution of a person to the aims and interests of the board rather than the pursuit of sectional interests.

I sometimes make discreet inquiries when a board has been in place for a while as to who attends meetings and makes good, constructive contributions. That is always interesting. Occasionally I will receive a positive telephone call and somebody will sell himself or herself regarding commitment, ideas and approach. When appointed, he or she thinks outside the box and takes issues forward in a sensible manner, whereas other appointees are journeymen, attending meetings, drawing a stipend but not making a contribution. However, there is no relationship between the academic qualifications of an individual or his or her professional work and the contribution he or she makes to a board. In most cases inherent commitment to the job in hand and belief in what the board was set up to do, and its delivery, determines performance but that is difficult to measure.

Qualifications in their widest sense are important. An appointee may never have worked in the headquarters of a major national community organisation but he or she may have been involved within his or her parish for 30 or 40 years in development in a selfless way by putting in time, effort, money and know-how on the ground. Experts are needed on such boards but a mixture of people must be appointed.

With the exception of Senator Ulick Burke's proposal, none of the others would per se take away the need for judgment. Somebody must make a judgment. Does the Minister or a group such as a community development programme make it in the final analysis? If the chairpersons of CDPs made the decisions, nobody would believe the Minister failed to get to them even if he or she did not go near them because people tend to believe what they want. If they make a bad call, they cannot be called before the House to be asked what the hell they are at, unlike the Minister.

The party politics in which we are engaged is tuppence ha'penny stuff compared to academic politics. The president of a university college stated the difference between party politics and academic politics is that in party politics one is stabbed in the back whereas in academic politics one is stabbed in the front. I do not know whether that is bad because I have never been in academia.