Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing it out. For a lot of these very important institutions of State we are putting in place now, other legislation guarantees a balance within the composition of those bodies. It might stipulate not less than one person who shall have this experience, or one person who has that experience or, in the case of the judicial appointments legislation brought before this House the last time, people who had actually been vetted by the Public Appointments Service as to their suitability. That was on an openness basis. People could apply to be considered for appointment to these bodies but what we are doing here is giving the Minister almost limitless discretion as to who ends up on the board of an t-údarás. It goes on to say at least there will be at least 40% of each gender but there is nothing there to guarantee particular insights or experience as a prerequisite for appointment to the board.

The absence of those criteria means the Minister of the day will have power to make discretionary appointments to the board in a way that is not consonant with what has been happening with other semi-State bodies where legislation has tended to require that of the ten, 11, 12 or however many places it may be, two people will come from this category and two from that category or whatever. That has been the trend in public legislation and now we have a situation where we are reversing that trend and granting to the Minister effectively limitless discretion as to who he or she appoints to the board. That is what Senator Norris's amendment is aiming to tie down so at the very least some obeisance should be made to the proposition that the Higher Education Authority, which has such a significant influence over higher education in Ireland, should have among its membership people who are academic persons who have experience of the academic life. They must at a minimum be represented by some appointments to the board.

The alternative is to proceed with the section as it is and it might be that everybody would be either experienced in how t-údarás used to work or skilled in relation to the Irish language, organisational and financial governance, management, public administration or risk management. These things are so vague and there is not a guaranteed minimum quota for any of them in the composition of the board. I strongly support Senator Norris's amendment.