Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)

Having experience over several years of appointing people to boards, when one is ticking all the boxes on gender representation balance, it is something of an onerous task. This is especially the case when getting nominations from various groups who do not necessarily put forward a gender balanced nomination, leaving it up to the Minister to ensure the gender balance of a board's membership. Much of the employer-employee relationship legislation requires representatives from trade unions and employers' groups on various boards. When one gets the nominations from these groups, as I said on Committee Stage, the Minister has to re-balance the board to tick the correct boxes on gender balance.

I accept Senator Bacik's point on highlighting the requirement for representatives with experience in consumer affairs. It was suggested on Committee Stage that there should be a specific requirement for representatives of consumer interests. Virtually everyone has had some dealings with the services to be regulated under this legislation. Any person off the street, therefore, would be able to represent consumer affairs in that respect. If one picks one over the other, in this case property services providers, will it imbalance representation?

I am desirous to have consumers' interests represented as much as possible. I will examine it again before it goes to the Dáil to see if the section can be tweaked to highlight consumer affairs. My experience, however, is that when one is picking a board it is better to have people on it with no vested interests because one might get a better overview. Having said that, when dealing with specialised legislation, one cannot pick anyone off the street to be an authority member. They need to have some experience and knowledge in the area concerned or else the board will become ineffectual.