Kathryn Reilly (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. Much of what I intend to say has already been touched on by other Senators. I will say it anyway just to get my spake on the record, as they say. Appointments to State boards have often been manipulated by past and present Governments for their own interests. The system of appointment has become a byword for croneyism. This has helped to discredit our political system in the eyes of the public. This issue has called out for proper reform in the past. As others have said, this issue was really brought to light by the McNulty affair last year. A Government that had spoken about "democratic revolution" was trying to appoint its Seanad candidate to the board of the Irish Museum of Modern Art in an attempt to improve his credentials. This was in contrast with the Labour Party's 2011 general election manifesto, which listed the various ways in which that party planned to reform the political system. One of the ways in which this was to be done was by "opening up positions on state boards to all qualified candidates, and require appointments to be scrutinised by the Dáil". According to the same manifesto:

Labour will end the system whereby appointments to state boards are used as a form of political patronage and for rewarding insiders. In future, appointment to boards must be based on a demonstrable capacity to do the job.

It is unfortunate that when the McNulty affair was made public, some Labour Party Ministers remained silent rather than challenging the affair itself. It seemed not just to those of us who are involved in the political system but also to ordinary citizens that this was a far cry from the radical political reform that was mentioned in the 2011 manifesto. That was unfortunate. Since this Government came to power, having rallied loudly against the previous Administration's system of appointments, it has participated to a fashion in the same type of parish-pump politics as its predecessors. That has been illustrated by the appointment to State boards of a number of people who have particular links to one of the Government parties.