Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The guarantee that the chairperson shall be drawn from a specific sectoral interest, or that a specific sectoral interest should have a minimum number of members on a committee, would undermine the committee's independence and would impact on its eligibility as an implementer of key EU local development programmes. Given this requirement, I am not in a position to accept the amendments as proposed. However, I should point out that elected members may very well be the chairs of these committees. It is up to the committee to make that decision, as they did in Cork yesterday.

Amendment No. 52 proposes that with regard to sectors to be represented on local community development committees, a reference to statutory agencies be added to the already existing reference to public authorities. This section of the Bill relies on the definition of "public authorities" contained in section 2 of the Local Government Act 2001, which provides for the inclusion of a broad range of public bodies as public authorities, including "a board or other body established by or under statute". This definition has been drafted in a sufficiently broad manner to encompass statutory agencies and therefore the amendment is, in my view, unnecessary.

Amendments Nos. 53, 55 and 56 propose additional categories to be covered in the membership of committees. I do not consider that a reference to drawing members from communities of interest is required because section 128D(2)(d) already provides for members to be drawn from representatives of the local community. Therefore, this refers to the proposed communities of interest.

With regard to the proposals of additional categories of committee members, a key point is to ensure that we have a tightly focused membership and not a huge number of people that would make the committee unwieldy. The proposed amendments concerning, for example, guaranteed membership for representatives of all social partners on the committee would inevitably result in a larger than intended membership.

It is well known that we have had a plethora of large committee and boards whose effectiveness frequently suffers due to the size of their membership. The recommendation to me by the expert group that studies local development alignment was to keep the committees as small and focused as possible. Accordingly, I will do so and therefore I will not accept the amendment.