David Cullinane (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State and commend Senator Quinn on introducing the Bill and providing Senators with an opportunity to discuss this important issue. In January 2013, several news outlets ran with the story that the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Deputy Pat Rabbitte, had appointed Mr. Noel Ward, a former constituency organiser for the Minister, to the board of Ordnance Survey Ireland. Mr. Ward was appointed although he did not apply for the position following a public advertisement by the Department. The position to which he was appointed paid €7,695 per annum for attending board meetings. As Senators are aware, this practice has taken place under the watch of this Government and previous Governments.

I concur with Senator Mooney's general point on remuneration, namely, that the vast majority of people would serve on boards, irrespective of whether financial rewards were available. Sometimes, however, money makes a difference. One need look no further than councils up and down the State to see the way in which membership of strategic policy committees and positions of mayor and deputy mayor are being carved up. When a role involves money, it will be contested whereas there is much less contention when positions do not involve money. Payment has an impact and to argue that money is not an issue is to bury one's head in the sand.

Fine Gael and the Labour Party promised in their pre-election manifestos to end the culture of political cronyism in State appointments. Unfortunately, political appointments persist and the Government has failed to tackle other State board governance issues. The Central Remedial Clinic scandal is a good example of what is wrong with the system. The CRC case highlighted how loose corporate governance of boards can result in potential financial and regulatory fallout. Similarly, the position at Rehab, where members of the public waited for weeks to discover the salary of the then chief executive, Angela Kerins, directors and other members of the board, highlighted a lack of transparency in agencies in receipt of public money. I hope we will move in a new direction in light of what occurred in the case of Rehab.

The Rehab scandal highlighted a number of bad practices on boards. We saw, for instance, that there was no proper appointments process in place despite the fact that the Health Service Executive had emphasised that it did not want appointments made without due process. Brian Conlan was a former member of the board of the Central Remedial Clinic which signed off on a highly dubious €742,00 golden handshake for Mr. Paul Kiely when he retired. When the Committee of Public Accounts inquired as to the reason this payment had been allowed, Mr. Conlan denied knowledge of any of the details and, when questioned further, stated he was a member of numerous boards - I believe the figure was 12 - his attendance at CRC board meetings was infrequent and his interest was passive. Mr. Conlan sat on the CRC board to do a job. This case raises the question as to how one individual could be on 12 different boards and give each of them his or her full attention. It is not possible to do so and the case highlights that certain people have been appointed to multiple boards, not on the basis of a particular skill but for reasons of political patronage, favours and so forth. The CRC case is illustrative of a wider malaise in the system.

There is a process for making public appointments, and it is important to acknowledge that the Government has improved that process for the better. The problem, however, is that Ministers have routinely flouted it and, in so doing, have undermined the very process they sought to enhance and the boards to which those appointments were made. In 2010, TASC produced a report entitled Mapping the Golden Circle which identified a directors' network of 39 individuals who were members of at least two boards across 33 of the 40 boards included in the study. The revelation that Brian Conlan, the former chief executive officer of the Central Remedial Clinic at one time, was a member of 12 boards, including a number of public boards, may be startling but is not surprising. It does beg the question, however, of how many boards one individual can sit on while still being able to give each his or her full attention. This is particularly a problem when people sit on both public boards and private boards, where there could potentially be conflicts of interest, some of which go undeclared.

While Fine Gael and the Labour Party railed and rallied loudly in opposition against Fianna Fáil's insider system of appointments, they have, since entering government, taken up where the last Administration left off. Indeed, more than 60 appointments to State boards in the three years since the Government took office have not been made in a fair way. Ministers have essentially ignored applications submitted through the public advertisement system established by the Government. For example, only 15 of the 64 individuals appointed to State boards under the auspices of the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation applied through this advertisement system. Of the 40 who applied for positions on the board of the Health Information and Quality Authority, HIQA, only one was appointed through this process. The Minister for Health appointed 52 people to State boards early in 2013, including a Fine Gael councillor who was appointed to the board of St. James's Hospital and a former party programme manager who was appointed to the board of HIQA. A former Fine Gael councillor from my own city of Waterford was appointed to the board of Irish Water in what was clearly a political appointment by the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Phil Hogan, who is a personal friend of this individual. Meanwhile, in his first two years in office, the Minister for Education and Skills appointed just five of the 190 members of the public who applied to sit on the three education boards under his remit. None of the 49 who applied through the Public Appointments Service to sit on the board of Léargas, for instance, was deemed appropriate to be appointed by the Minister. When the Institute of Directors in Ireland undertook a survey of appointments to State boards in 2012, it found that almost three quarters of the candidates for such positions whom they interviewed believed the process of appointment was not fair and transparent.

The Government must begin the process of addressing this issue by compiling a database of all commercial and non-commercial State agencies, boards, board members, competencies and remuneration. This work must come under the auspices of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. Six years after the financial crisis, the absence of Government action in this area is allowing problems to continue in State boardrooms. It is in the interests of all political parties and everybody in the political system to deal with this issue once and for all. I have already acknowledged the positive changes the Government has made and its improved performance in comparison with that of its predecessor. We still, however, have a long way to go. We support Senator Quinn's Bill.