James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

These amendments relate to the size and composition of the directorate. The Bill provides that the directorate will be the governing body. I have always made clear my intention for employees in charge of key service areas to be members of the directorate. It is also my intention that the person heading the child and family services division would be a member of the directorate pending the establishment of the new child and family agency. I believe the governing body of the HSE should have the scope to encompass other significant management people in the HSE as well. Accordingly, I introduced an amendment in the Dáil, amendment No. 2, to increase the maximum number of appointed directors from six to eight. This will allow relevant service heads and a small number of other key senior employees, including the chief operations officer and chief financial officer, to form the governing body of the HSE.

I introduced amendment No. 3 to provide that persons eligible to be appointed as directors include not only HSE employees at the grade of national director, but other employees of no less senior grade.

Amendment No. 4 was brought forward to allow for the eventuality whereby an employee may act in the relevant grade on a temporary basis but whose substantive grade is less senior. This situation has already arisen in fact because the interim national director for child and family services in the HSE is in an acting position in the context of the transfer of the child and family services to the new child and family agency.

Amendment No. 5 is consequential on amendment No. 3.

Amendment No. 20 serves to ensure that the Minister can appoint an appointed director's second-in-command to act as a temporary member of the directorate during an extended absence, for example, through illness, of the appointed director. The amendment arises from the need to consider practical situations that might arise and relates to a time when, perhaps through sudden illness or accident, the director would be unable to appoint his deputy himself.