Maurice Cummins (Fine Gael)

I spoke at length on Second Stage on the subject covered by the three amendments. Local authority members should not be excluded from the boards. It seems the Parliamentary Counsel has included their exclusion as a matter of course. On two occasions, a Minister has agreed with what we said on this matter on this side of the House. One Minister decided local authority members should be included and, in the other case, a Minister of State said he would sleep on the matter for the night. However, he obviously slept on it the wrong way because he disagreed. It is one-all at this stage and we are in extra time. We are depending on the Minister to accept these amendments

Local authority members may have a vast pool of knowledge in the areas in question and they should certainly not be excluded from membership of the authority. The ball is in the Minister's court and we hope he will accept the amendments.