Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)

I do not want the legislation to be prescriptive in appointing someone from a specified representative association for consumers. In all legislation it is preferable to keep references to the composition of boards as vague as possible. In various Ministries I had the experience of asking representative bodies to nominate individuals for appointment to boards only to find my hands were tied when it came to meeting criteria such as gender equality. There were occasions when representative bodies, some of which were close enough to Senator Bacik's interests, turned out to be the least willing to propose females for nomination to boards. It is not that a Minister would mind, but it would tie his or her hands. I can give several examples from my career when I had to go back to representative bodies to request them to nominate females. History shows that while many of these bodies espouse a desire for a gender balance on boards, they do not propose females for appointment. It is preferable, therefore, to define references to the designation of boards in relatively vague terms. We think we have catered for this objective, given that we are legislating for a specialist board, in respect of which one cannot pick someone from the street. I am prepared to reconsider before Report Stage the words "not more than three" and whether we can beef up the proposed new subsection (3) to put greater emphasis on ordinary members of the public who might have reasonable experience in consumer affairs without requiring them to be members of the Consumers Association of Ireland.