I move amendment No. 1:
To add to the section the following new subsections:
"(2) The Minister shall make regulations for the purposes of an appointment under subsection (1) which shall set out the method of appointment of an interview board and the qualifications for appointment, including in particular qualifications in relation to age, education and local knowledge.
(3) Where regulations are proposed to be made under subsection (2) a draft thereof shall be laid before each House of the Oireachtas and such regulations shall not come into effect until a resolution approving the draft has been passed by each such House."
I do not think there is any need to go into the amendment in any great detail. The various merits and demerits of appointments either by the Local Appointments Commission, as was suggested, or by local interview boards were discussed fairly fully on Second Stage. The merits and demerits of having a straight appointment made by the county manager, without consultation or reference to any interview board, was also discussed fairly fully.
I expressed myself yesterday as being less than happy with the alternative method of referring the appointments to the Local Appointments Commission on the basis that, unless a special case was made for the appointment, the position would be open to applicants from all parts of the country and the essential qualification of local knowledge and experience would, consequently, be lost. I also expressed serious reservations about the suggested method of appointment by a county manager even after an interview board make recommendations. Some of the Members of the House would be at one with me in this having heard the Parliamentary Secretary's reply on Second Stage when he was at pains to point out that there would be no obligation upon a county manager to accept the recommendation of an interview board which was set up to interview applicants for the post. If the county manager felt that he had better knowledge of the applicants than the interview board it would be up to him to decide to appoint somebody else and that was all there would be about it. The activities, time and recommendations of the interview board would count for nothing. I do not see the merit of a system such as that and I do not think it would be an improvement on the existing method of appointment which, we are all agreed, is not a very good one and should be changed.
Because of the various undertakings and suggestions made in the course of this Bill I thought that the Parliamentary Secretary might have been anxious to write into the Bill the type of regulations which would be set out in relation to the interview board itself and in relation to the qualifications of the applicants. I had hoped that there would be imposed on the county manager an obligation to accept the recommendation of the interview board, but obviously that is not going to be the case. In addition, it is not clear that there will even be an obligation on the manager to set up an interview board in the first place.
The Bill is extremely short and the only guidelines that can be laid down under the terms of this Bill will be merely guidelines by way of circular letter from the Department. If a manager chooses not to set up an interview board but to make the appointments himself, after having carried out interviews or having made his own tests, he will be perfectly free to do so. I should like regulations to be set up which oblige the manager to appoint an interview board and to accept their recommendations. If we are all agreed that the present method of appointment is not a good one, that it needs to be changed and that the change is going to be an improvement, it should also be seen to be better. It can be made better publicly by ensuring that the interview board makes the choice and that the manager accepts that choice.
If that is not to be the case, then I think it would be of extreme importance that the members of the local authority in question and the general public should be made aware of the fact that an interview board has sat and has interviewed applicants and that the county manager has, in his wisdom, subsequently decided not to accept the board's recommendations but has decided to appoint somebody himself. That would be a very important qualification in this suggested method of appointment.
I agree with the parliamentary Secretary that some of the interviewers should be local officers of a local authority who have the individual knowledge peculiar to that administrative area. It is important that some of the interviewers should have that knowledge. Of course, it would be equally important that a number of them—I would imagine the majority of them—should be from outside the administrative area where the appointment is to be made.
I believe that all of those things should be clearly set out in statutory regulations to be made by the Minister. They could be discussed in this House and they would then become a legal onus and obligation on the county manager. Under the terms of this Bill I believe that that will not be the case: a circular letter will be issued of which the manager may or may not take cognisance. It would also be important, in view of the discussion that took place here, that the particular qualifications for the position of rate collector shall again be clearly set out in statutory regulations, so that it would become apparent to everybody what were the qualities necessary for the position. The proposed change could be made better than the present system if these suggestions were to be carried out now. It would be preferable if it was made clear to everybody that they were becoming a legal obligation as part of an Act of the Oireachtas or regulations made thereunder rather than the vague recommendations in a letter which apparently will emanate from the Department, if I understand the Parliamentary Secretary correctly.