Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

Not yet. Anybody who thinks lobbying of a board does not take place because it is one remove from a Minister has never experienced the worlds of academia and voluntary organisations. People will be accountable at least under this legislation.

There is two problems with Senator Ulick Burke's proposal, which crop up now and again. If all the CDPs were given a right to nominate somebody to the board, he or she would become their prisoner. If money is allocated to a partnership, he or she will be questioned as to why he or she did not ensure the money was allocated to the CDP rather than the partnership. There is a tendency for that to happen and I am not enamoured with boards to whom people are appointed in this manner because the person becomes a prisoner of the organisation that nominates him or her. The second problem is that the person is a nominee of the community development programme, CDP. Does this mean that every time the board is making a recommendation on something to do with CDPs, the CDP nominee must vacate the room?

The third issue is a strange by-product of nominees. Remember, for example, when we considered the issue of the number of women on boards and the Department with the worst record. We were ready to berate our colleagues for having so few women on boards, but before we could do so they pointed out that the matter was not so simple because if we removed the ministerial nominees where the balance was right with the 40% minimum, the balance of nominations to the board tended to be men which often left a skewed board in terms of gender equity. If nominations are to come from different groups, we cannot prescribe alternate male or female nominees for each group. Neither can we say we will put in half a woman and half a man where there is only one nomination to be made. This issue is a problem.