Shane Ross (Dublin Rathdown, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I agree that we will have to address the capacity on the Luas in the future. It is not too bad at the moment. We undoubtedly must make provision for that in respect of Cherrywood.

Senator Boyhan was talking about the Road Safety Authority, RSA. A new system has been introduced for making board appointments in my Department. It is exclusive to my Department. The RSA is part of that. The first criterion is that we look at the board and ask if it needs ten, 11 or whatever number of people it was. The RSA has a board membership of between six and 11. I am curious as to why 11 are needed for a body of that sort, because expertise in every area is not needed in such an agency. The expertise tends to be among the executive and that is very important. I am looking at that and I am determined that the RSA will not be inquorate. Some people were suggesting that it would be inquorate but the board will not be inquorate. The board will have sufficient expertise but the membership will have to go through a procedure which starts by asking if it is necessary to have these board members. It goes on to ask further questions about the numbers that come up to the Minister, because I have been very unhappy that in the RSA, the names of 21 people were sent to the last Minister of whom he was to select three. It was very difficult for him and would be very difficult for any Minister to select three out of 21 when he or she knows nothing about it. That is the situation in which the Minister would have found himself and in which I found myself as well.

I asked that it go before a body of self-assessment. It goes through the PAS system, as it always did before, but the numbers that come up to me as a Minister are limited to a maximum of three, to deliberately remove ministerial discretion in order that there is not the sort of political patronage that existed on these boards before. That process is now coming into being at the moment and we will appoint accordingly. I will preferably get one, but in certain cases I will probably get three. We are going to end the system in my Department where people get sent up to the Minister just because they qualify. There were more than 30 names for two places on the Irish Sports Council. The Minister gets 30 names, and I do not know how he or she appoints them. He or she finds people there who he or she thinks will be politically favourable.

On top of that, I introduced a system which will apply to the RSA and to any other State bodies in my Department in which interviews will be introduced. One of the most extraordinary features of board membership of the RSA and board membership under the remit of my Department and of other Departments was that the vacancies were being filled without interviews or anything like that at all. Consequently, ministerial discretion was absolute and we were getting people making appointments presumably on recommendation from outside and for other reasons. They were being done without interview. We are going to have an interview panel, which is independent in so far as it can be, which will select people who will go for ministerial approval or not. That should remove the accusation that there is political favouritism going on.

The backlog in driver tests was something which-----