Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is correct in saying the significance of this amendment must be seen in the context of proposals to amend section 16. At the moment, section 16 says:

The Board shall consist of the following members: (a) a chairperson;

(b) 11 ordinary members.

It goes on to say:

...the chairperson and the ordinary members of the Board shall be appointed by the Minister from among persons who, in the opinion of the Minister, have sufficient experience and expertise relating to— (i) matters connected with the functions of an tÚdarás to enable them to make a substantial contribution to the effective and efficient performance of those functions.

I will stop there to say that seems to indicate people connected with and who have worked for or are retired from the HEA are in contemplation there. The second category of people who are eligible are persons having "sufficient experience and expertise relating to ... matters connected to education, teaching and learning, research, the promotion and use of the Irish language, organisational and financial governance, management, public administration or risk management". That is all very well but the Minister's power under section 16(2)(a) is to select 11 ordinary members from those categories, which include for instance public administration, management and financial governance. People who qualify on that ground are eligible to be appointed by the Minister but there is no obligation to appoint anybody who has, for instance, experience as an academic of how a university or other higher education institution operates.

The point is this legislation gives to the Minister the power to determine effectively who is on the board of an t-údarás and who is not. There is also one other category I forgot to mention, namely, somebody who is "a student or a full-time officer of a national student union". How many students are there at any given time? Perhaps 100,000. There is to be a person who is there quastudent, not a person who is there by reason of being in a student representative body or anything of that kind. Therefore, there is massive flexibility there.

What Senator Norris's amendments are attempting to achieve, in the round, is that the Minister is not to be left with this unfettered discretion to compose this board of whoever he or she likes. This House spent a long time, and I take some blame for it, considering the terms of the judicial appointments commission-----