Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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99. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform the changes in the guidelines on appointments to State boards that were published on 25 November 2014, and the reason these have not been implemented in full before now. [47794/14]

Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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In 2011 the Government introduced new arrangements for the appointment of State board members. Under those arrangements Departments invited expressions of interest from the public in vacancies on the boards of bodies under their aegis on their websites. It was intended that all members of the public could apply for appointment to these vacancies. In order to facilitate this wider access, a new website portal, stateboards.ie, was created by Public Appointments Service to offer a single dedicated point of contact to all Government Departments as a support to existing Board member selection procedures.

While these new arrangements were successful in opening up the appointments process for State boards, the Government concluded that further progress could be made building on progress to date. I, therefore, brought a further Memorandum to Government in September approving the introduction of a new system for State Board Appointments. The Decision required my Department to prepare Guidelines on the new process. In preparing the Guidelines my officials sought the views of all Departments, as well as meeting with interested parties and working closely with the Public Appointments Service.

The Guidelines were approved in November and seek to provide good practice rules around the implementation of the Decision, which has at its core three key principles:

-promote wider access to opportunities on State Boards;

-put in place detailed and comprehensive criteria for those roles; and

-introduce transparent and rigorous assessment of candidates against these criteria.

The Guidelines clarify to which positions on Boards the Guidelines apply and set out the steps in the process leading up to Ministerial appointments of individuals to State Boards. The Public Appointments Service is currently working with all Departments to implement these new arrangements.