Labhrás Ó Murchú (Fianna Fail)

That local authority members were being precluded on a continuous basis from State boards and other statutory bodies could be wrongly interpreted as responding to a caricature of local authority members which had been promoted by certain people and some sections of the media. This was most unfair because anybody familiar with the work of local councillors will know full well that they have particularly good experience. This experience and expertise was being denied to a board.

Although not in the worst sense, it almost seemed racist in a way to set out specifically to preclude somebody simply because that person served on a local authority. It did not do public life any credit or justice. I am delighted with what the Minister of State has done in this legislation and I hope other Ministers respond accordingly. Now, more than ever, we need this experience. I often felt that when the health boards went out of existence, we lost the conduit to the public which was particularly important. We see it with the HSE to some extent. I will not set out to HSE bash because I know it is a complex issue. However, we can see a breakdown in communication with the public occurred because of the centralisation of the authority of the HSE.

With the health boards, people were able to make an approach to a local authority member who, with a telephone call or immediate approach to an official within the health board, was able to allay the fears of the person who approached him or her. It is important that we put down a marker at this stage that whatever wrong interpretation was there, it was not the intention to in some way demonise local authority members and it is difficult to find justification for precluding them simply because they are members of a local authority.