This is the section which proposes to increase the number of directors from seven to nine. The Minister has acknowledged that these two directors will be nominated by himself from officials from the Department of Finance and the Department of Industry and Energy. We will have two civil servants appointed to the board. I am not by any means reassured by the Minister's attempt at reassurance. I want to go back now to the reasons why the board was constituted as it was and the reasons which were relevant then are even more relevant now. They were supported by both sides of the House. Let me quote Deputy Cooney at column 2213 of Volume 256:
...I found that the approach adopted in Dublin was too conservative and too bureaucratic — I do not use the words in a pejorative sense — and enough cognisance was not taken of the problems on the ground so to speak.
At column 2215 he said:
I do not know how the Minister is going to constitute the new board. As he indicated, up to now the board has been comprised of civil servants — the secretaries of four Departments. Without any disrespect to the gentlemen on the present board, people of wider commercial experience would be required. I think the Minister should consider as members of this board people who are prepared to experiment in matters of industrial management, who are willing to get away from the traditional management philosophies we have in this country and which we have had to import from differently structured societies because of the size of our country and the average size of firms.
That is the general vein in which Deputy Cooney spoke.
Deputy Tulley, who represented the radical Left, spoke in precisely the same vein in welcoming what the late Deputy George Colley was doing, particularly in relation to changing the constitution of the new board from what was regarded as a Civil Service-dominated board. He said: "Deputy Cooney used the word `conservative' in respect of the State companies but I would put the word "ultra" before that. The ultra-conservative approach of some of the people in these companies has a dampening effect on firms seeking assistance, but perhaps that is the intention". Again, at column 2222, talking of the need to react quickly to small industries and businesses, he said:
This must be spelled out very clearly because I can see a group of people, and particularly civil servants, saying to a firm with 25 to 30 workers that they are only little chaps, that they do not qualify, and the Minister says so.
Those few extracts make the point. First of all, whether or not the civil servants on the board would attempt to do what Deputy Tully feared they would or what Deputy Cooney was apprehensive about, if they are perceived by the people who are determined to make the effort and are entitled to some reward in the almost impossible climate in which they operate as an administrative bureaucratic control on behalf of the Minister, then that will be in effect what they are and no assurance by the Minister introducing this unwelcome change——