Select Committee on Finance and General Affairs debate -
Thursday, 13 Feb 1997

SECTION 39.

Mr. Howlin

I move amendment No. 37:

In page 32, between lines 10 and 11, to insert the following subsection:

"(5) This section shall not apply to membership of a committee established by a local authority.".

Section 39 prohibits the chairperson, ordinary directors of the executive board and employees of the authority from also being members of a local authority. Under the Bill, a local authority means a local authority for the purposes of the Local Government Act, 1941, and would, therefore, include a committee established by a local authority. Members are aware that I have launched a new programme for change of local government and implicit in that is the development of strategic policy committees which would serve the main local authorities. It is envisaged that a broad range of talent would be drawn into these policy committees and I think it would be inappropriate that they would be debarred from being either the chairperson or a member of the executive board of the authority. For that reason I want to make this change.

Mr. McCormack

Does that mean either an elected member of a local authority or a non-elected member of a sub-committee could be a member of the executive?

Mr. Howlin

No, I am only exempting the committees.

Mr. McCormack

Is the Minister not discriminating against elected members, who might have equal talent to members of the committee?

Mr. E. Ryan

It is only the executive?

Mr. Howlin

Yes.

Mr. McCormack

Committee members are allowed to be members of the executive but local authority members are not?

Mr. Howlin

That is correct. There is a long-standing prohibition on local authority members belonging to boards such as this and the same applies to Members of the Oireachtas and the European Parliament. While they will have not only a right but a particular entitlement to be members of the council, they will not be members of the executive board. I thought the net would be too broad if it included committees of the local authority, particularly by the strategic policy committees. For example, if there is a development subcommittee of Dublin City Council it may well be drawn from people who would be appropriate members of the executive board.

Mr. McCormack

I am not making the case for local authority members to belong to the executive but they should be equal to everyone else if they have the necessary talent and should not be debarred because they are members of a local authority. They should be on it not by right but on merit. Although local government is being reformed this will not further it. The new Harbours Bill originally sought to debar local authority members from eligibility to sit on the new board, now it greatly limits their ability to do so. We are leaning over backwards to discriminate against elected representatives at local level.

Mr. E. Ryan

I support the Minister. As a local representative I feel it would be foolish to have local representatives directly involved as this provision could be abused. While I do not think public representatives should be barred from serving on a range of boards, in this case controversial decisions will have to be made at various stages and having local representatives on this board would reflect badly.

Amendment agreed to.

Section 39, as amended, agreed to.

Section 40 agreed to.