Marc MacSharry (Fianna Fail)

I join others in welcoming the Minister of State. I am glad to have the opportunity to make a few brief points on this motion. I thank the Green Party for framing the motion in the way it did. It is provocative and should yield interesting ideas. Perhaps we should consider framing more Private Members' motions in this way.

In line with ongoing reform of the public services and appointment of bodies with regard to efficiency, we wait eagerly to see what proposals various review groups including an bord snip nua and others will bring forward on how we can make the public service system more efficient and use the numbers to obtain maximum results in terms of the public services we require.

I am most interested in speaking about how we appoint people to boards. Senator Ivana Bacik touched on this earlier. When one considers the public perception of the Seanad, the difficulties in appreciating the work that goes on here and the fact the media do not cover it, a key reform I would like to see implemented is that appointments to a list of prescribed bodies, State agencies and perhaps semi-State bodies would be scrutinised for ratification or veto here, similar to the move made by the European Parliament with regard to the appointment of European Commissioners. Proposed appointees should make themselves available to the House for appropriate questioning to tease out any concerns.

The days of political cronyism are gone and so they should be. It is most important that we get the right people to do the right jobs at the right time. In this context, I am mildly concerned that while we have some excellent people in the public service serving on State boards and doing extremely good work, which in many instances far outweighs the level of remuneration they receive for it in terms of their commitment and contribution, a number of the same people keep popping up on various boards. We need change and to freshen up many of the agencies and boards and bring in — not that I am ageist and I am conscious of the previous debate on elder abuse — fresher and younger people to refocus and give more energy to these institutions.

I regret the practice of excluding as a matter of form local authority members from serving on any State agency or board. Senator Bradford also raised this matter. I would not like to see them there for reasons of political cronyism but local authority members are in the front line and are ideally placed to be representative of the public interest. In this context, it must become the practice to seek to include them and not to exclude them. Consistently over the past number of years, and perhaps it was a reaction to the levels of corruption we saw exposed through tribunals, we have sought to subcontract power away from the people's representatives. This is fundamentally wrong. We should seek to enhance democracy and ensure that power and decision making lie with the people which is in the Houses of the Oireachtas.

It is wrong that a body such as the Health Service Executive effectively has control over 30% of the State's money. We should seek to review this. I liked the old health board model, as flawed as it was, but we have what we have. We could improve upon the way we seek to push power and responsibility to third-party organisations. Departments and the Houses of the Oireachtas are the appropriate vehicles for taking many of the decisions.

I feel there is duplication in a wide variety of agencies. I am conscious that some bodies will be amalgamated through the budget of last October but there is scope for further amalgamation. Many agencies seem to be doing work which local authorities could do. Perhaps we can examine this. If we were to achieve anything from this debate it should be that we push for the Seanad being the appropriate forum to ratify or scrutinise public appointments across the range of State agencies.