The geographical spread of the appointments made by the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, to the board of the Blood Transfusion Service has raised serious questions about political motivation and the mechanisms used by governments to fill vacancies on State boards and in public agencies. It is unfortunate that the Blood Transfusion Service should be again embroiled in controversy, given the battering it has already taken at the Lindsay tribunal. Instead of leading public opinion towards renewed confidence in the service, this episode will cause further difficulties.
The Fine Gael spokesman on health, Mr Gay Mitchell, has declared his intention to raise the matter formally when the Dail returns next month. And he has suggested that the lack of balanced regional representation on the board could be designed to favour the reversal of a long-standing policy decision to close the blood testing service in Cork and to centralise the operation in Dublin. Medical practitioners in Munster have campaigned for years against the closure of the Cork blood testing service. They advanced compelling arguments to support their case. Their overtures were, however, rejected by the Minister's two predecessors. If Mr Martin's choice of personnel was specifically designed to facilitate a new departure on the issue because of political considerations involving his Cork base, it was a shoddy piece of work.
There is no doubt the new board members are eminently qualified. But a ministerial appointments system that permits the exclusion of representatives from most of the State's health board areas can hardly be viewed as balanced. It reflects the same lack of transparency that underpinned the Government's initial selection of Mr Hugh O'Flaherty for the European Investment Bank. And the episode will do nothing to ease public disquiet concerning the blood transfusion service itself.
The separate controversies should convince the Coalition Government that traditional methods for filling vacancies in State companies and agencies have passed their sell-by date and that blatant ministerial patronage is no longer acceptable in a developing meritocracy. The same holds true where the policy of decentralisation and the specific transfer of State agencies to ministerial constituencies is concerned. Before the summer, Progressive Democrats Minister for State, Ms Liz O'Donnell, memorably derided the efforts of ministers to secure local advantage from the process as "bogman politics". At that stage, the Cabinet was preparing to identify the towns and cities that will benefit from Mr Charlie McCreevy's decentralisation plans involving 100,000 civil and public servants.
The ministerial rush to secure a tranche of State employees for their constituencies was stemmed when it was agreed that a Cabinet sub-committee including the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern and the Tanaiste, Ms Harney, should discuss the various issues involved in the decentralisation process before final decisions were made. The need for an objective decision-making mechanism was underlined by the largest public service union, the CPSU, when delegates to its annual conference threatened to block decentralisation plans unless details were agreed in advance. But, given a lead-in time of two or three years between decisionmaking and the movement of personnel, there should be adequate time for such negotiations. Plans for decentralisation are not due to come back before Cabinet until next month. It would be in the best interests of the Government and the State if transparent economic and social considerations, rather than political clout, shaped those long-term decisions.