Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I would like to use my time this morning to raise the manner in which the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, is making appointments to the Climate Change Advisory Council. I am a member of the Joint Committee on Climate Action. We engaged in extensive prelegislative scrutiny of the climate Bill, where we heard from leading experts on international best practice for climate law and carbon budgets. During that prelegislative scrutiny, the make-up of the Climate Change Advisory Council was discussed at length. It was accepted that the previous council was disproportionately made up of economists and that any new council must have a broader range of expertise. It was also pointed out that Ireland was an outlier in having ex officiomembers as full members of the council and that representatives of State bodies should only serve in an advisory capacity.

We then heard about the importance of a public appointments process. We were told that the members of the Climate Change Advisory Council must be independent and they must be in a position to hold whatever Government it may be to account if it fails to meet its legally binding targets. We were advised that the hallmark of independence is the appointments process. We were told of the need for positions to be publicly advertised and filled by open competition. The Joint Committee on Climate Action agreed with this advice and included that recommendation in its prelegislative report to the Minister, Deputy Ryan.

In February, before the climate Bill passed, the Minister, Deputy Ryan, made a number of appointments to the council. I questioned the process of those appointments and was informed they were made under the provisions of the 2015 Act and that future appointments would be made when the new Bill passed. Sinn Féin put forward detailed amendments to the new Bill calling for a similar appointments process to that for the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission. Other members of the Opposition supported our amendments calling for a public appointments process. None of those amendments were accepted. In fact, we were assured there was no need for the amendments because a protocol has been in place for appointments since 2014. Therefore, the House can imagine our surprise and disappointment when the Minister, Deputy Ryan, proceeded to appoint more members to the Climate Change Advisory Council in October with no process at all. It was simply that the Minister said that he knows best and that the people appointed were qualified.If that does not sound exactly like Zappone and the arrogance that we heard from the Minister, Deputy Coveney, on the Zappone appointment, then I do not know what does. Nobody is saying that the people appointed are not qualified. Nobody is calling into question their expertise but it appears that this Government has learned nothing from Zapponegate. Ministers cannot and should not go around appointing their friends to publicly paid positions just because they think they are the best person for the job. If they are the best person for the job, then they have nothing to fear from a competitive process.

Appointments to boards cannot be about rewarding friends who canvassed for you or who took to social media to support your leadership challenge or who argued strongly for the Green Party to go into government during those talks. That is not the appropriate way to do business. It does not matter if the people are qualified. They should have nothing to fear from a public appointments process. What has happened here is not about the individuals in question. It is not calling into question their expertise. Just like the Zappone appointment, this is cronyism through and through. I look forward to hearing the Minister's explanation for why the Government did not follow the protocol that is in place with regard to public appointments.