Inability to reverse 'orgy' of State appointments criticised

IT IS “not good enough” that the Government cannot “reverse the orgy of State appointments” made by the last government as it left office, Independent TD Shane Ross has said. He claimed the system of political appointments would continue “dressed up with some sort of popular input”.

These appointments “ought to be reversed, even if it means changing the law; and if the Attorney General has given advice, the Taoiseach must not hide behind it”, he said in the Dáil. Enda Kenny “must change the law because the quango culture and the culture of cronyism is still alive and well”. Mr Ross was commenting as the Government reversed its promise, based on legal advice, to sack the 110 people appointed to State boards in the final days of the last government.

He also criticised the Government’s proposal that the chairpersons of various semi-State bodies be interviewed by an Oireachtas committee because “the applicants can be utterly ignored by the Minister in charge, who can pick one of his or her pals just as Fianna Fáil did in the past”.

But Mr Kenny said involving the Government in “legal technicalities in removing people from State boards” was “not worthwhile”. He added that “if the Government was still involved in six months’ time in legal wrangles in removing person X from board Y, the Deputy would be very unappreciative of the efforts we had tried to make in the spending of public money”.

During Leaders’ Questions the Taoiseach said there should have been “some sense of understanding” by those approached by the last government in its final two or three days “that they would not accept their appointments if they had any sense of call it what you want”.

Mr Kenny said he had told all Ministers that “persons to be appointed as chairpersons of boards, taking into account the need to have a proper gender balance, should have credibility, competence and vision in what they will bring to an appointment”.

The Government has already announced its decision to allow the public apply for appointments to such boards. The Taoiseach said that someone going before the committee would have to be competent and have the necessary credentials.

Mr Ross said the committees would have no power of veto, so the power of appointment would remain with the Ministers. But the Taoiseach said the Government would bring to the appointments of State boards a “transparency that has never before been seen”.

Asked about appointees to the boards of banks, the Taoiseach said the boards of banks “are entirely different from State boards”. He added that the Minister for Finance would shortly “make a number of announcements on the governance of the boards of banks”. Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin said the appointments by the last government were “only a fraction of what occurred in 1997” when the rainbow administration left office.

Joe Higgins (SP, Dublin West) said Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil did not “understand the huge cynicism among ordinary people about this blatant jobbery”.