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Appointments to State Boards

Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 26 February 2019

Tuesday, 26 February 2019

Questions (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

Brendan Howlin

Question:

1. Deputy Brendan Howlin asked the Taoiseach if he will report on the State boards and agencies that civil servants from his Department are appointed to. [7901/19]

View answer

Mattie McGrath

Question:

2. Deputy Mattie McGrath asked the Taoiseach the appointments made by him since his election as Taoiseach to State boards or other agencies under the aegis of his Department. [7981/19]

View answer

Mary Lou McDonald

Question:

3. Deputy Mary Lou McDonald asked the Taoiseach the appointments he has made to State boards and other bodies under the aegis of his Department since February 2018. [9288/19]

View answer

Richard Boyd Barrett

Question:

4. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Taoiseach if he will report on the State boards and agencies that civil servants from his Department are appointed to. [9304/19]

View answer

Joan Burton

Question:

5. Deputy Joan Burton asked the Taoiseach if he will report on the appointments made by him to State boards and agencies under the aegis of his Department. [9422/19]

View answer

Brendan Howlin

Question:

6. Deputy Brendan Howlin asked the Taoiseach if he will report on his recent engagements with the National Economic and Social Council. [9516/19]

View answer

Oral answers (7 contributions)

I propose to take Questions Nos. 1 to 6, inclusive, together.

The National Economic and Social Council, NESC, is an independent statutory agency operating under the aegis of my Department. The council analyses and reports on strategic policy matters relevant to Ireland's economic, social, environmental and sustainable development. In accordance with the National Economic and Social Development Office Act 2006, I have certain functions, such as appointing the members of the NESC and presenting reports to Government prior to publication. The council is funded through my Department's Vote and my Department also has governance responsibilities relating to the council. In accordance with the legislation, two officials from my Department at Secretary General and assistant secretary level currently have the position of chairperson and deputy chairperson. Since becoming Taoiseach I have made eight appointments to the NESC, five of these since February 2018. Four appointments were made on the basis of nominations from sectoral organisations, as provided for in the legislation. In addition, four independent members were appointed following advertisement of the vacancies on stateboards.ie and a selection process conducted by the Public Appointments Service. The National Economic and Social Development Office, NESDO, is the body corporate for the NESC. Section 13 of the NESDO Act 2006 provides that the chairperson and deputy chairperson of the NESC are members of NESDO.

The National Statistics Board, NSB, was established under the Statistics Act 1993 to guide the broad strategic direction of the Central Statistics Office, CSO, and in particular to establish priorities for the development of official statistics in Ireland. The legislation provides that the NSB shall consist of eight members, including an assistant secretary or equivalent or higher grade from my Department and the Department of Finance, and the director general of the CSO. I made one appointment to the National Statistics Board last month following a selection process conducted by the Public Appointments Service.

All appointments to the NESC and to the NSB have been made in line with the relevant legislative provisions and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform guidelines on appointments to State boards. One principal officer in my Department has been nominated to the council of Gaisce, whose appointments are made by the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs.

It is odd that my question, No. 6, on the NESC was included in the five questions relating to State boards, but there we are. Have all departmental officials on State boards been apprised of Circular 12/2010, in particular that a Minister must be notified without delay where there is a significant strategic or reputational risk to the State body that is not being addressed? Is there a clear and uniform understanding of the role of departmental civil servants on State boards? What does the Taoiseach understand by civil servants on State boards serving in a personal capacity? I may be wrong and the Taoiseach can correct me but I am sure individual civil servants do not apply through the State boards system themselves as individuals. It is presumed they are appointed by Ministers because they have a role within the Department structure. Does the Taoiseach agree with the conclusions of the Comptroller and Auditor General when he said that concerns about the national children's hospital should have been passed on to Ministers if those concerns were not being addressed by the board? Does the Taoiseach think this is the correct working methodology for civil servants on State boards, that where there are concerns they believe are not being addressed by the board, in accordance with Circular 12/2010, the Minister should be directly advised of that matter?

The Taoiseach will be familiar with the public sector trends research carried out by the Institute of Public Administration, IPA. In its latest study published in December, it found that the proportion of women on the boards of non-commercial State agencies varies greatly by parent Department. The highest proportion of women are represented on traditional feminised boards with responsibility for areas of social policy such as education, children and youth affairs, although all of those fall shy of gender parity. One of the most disappointing findings was that the Taoiseach's Department had the lowest proportion of women on non-commercial State boards. I would be interested to find out whether this position has changed since the research was published.

The report also finds that boards that fall under the remit of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, whose responsibility it is to deliver Civil Service renewal, have the fourth lowest proportion of women despite the fact that there is now a higher share of women in professional posts, for example, working as senior economists or policy analysts. This demonstrates that there is no shortage of women with the necessary education and skills to populate these types of boards. A total of 40% of those on State boards are women but just 27% of them hold chairperson roles. Eleven boards have no female representation at all. Less than half of State boards have reached the minimum 40% target of female representation. I take no pleasure in noting that the Department of the Taoiseach has the worst report card when it comes to women's participation on State boards. This sends out a very bad signal to women of all ages inside and outside the public sector. I am sure the Taoiseach has read the IPA research and I would be interested to hear what action he has taken or intends to take to increase the number of women on boards under the aegis of his Department.

Following on from Deputy Howlin's questions and in light of the debacle around the national children's hospital, the reporting obligations of civil servants appointed to the board require very considerable further explanation, and not just in that particular instance because of the particular clauses referred to by Deputy Howlin. More generally, the issue has arisen with public interest directors in the banks and semi-State bodies. In Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, and I presume it is replicated everywhere else, bizarre situations arose where, when issues relating to the body to which they were appointed were being discussed, public representatives would walk out of the room claiming that they had a conflict of interest. I do not understand that. What is the point of us putting civil servants or indeed public representatives on boards of State agencies if they are not responsible to this House or democratic bodies and have responsibilities relating to reporting? What is point of putting them in there and if, in this case, they are somehow subject to the confidentiality of a project group? It seems to defeat the purpose of putting them on the board in the first place. Surely the only point of putting a civil servant on a project board like that or on the board of any agency or semi-State agency is that they are there to mind the public interest and to report back if the public interest is adversely affected.

Some time ago, we discussed the issue of women on boards. I understand that the Taoiseach has committed to increasing gradually the numbers of women on boards, particularly in areas like finance. That is all to the good. How long will we have to wait in those areas, including with reference to the Department of Finance and the Department of the Taoiseach?

Ireland is now a very different country in terms of the most recent census compared with what it was 20 or 30 years ago. We now have people from diverse backgrounds all over the world who have made their homes in Ireland and whose children have grown up in Ireland, many of whom, especially in our constituency, are now past the teenage stage, have qualified from college and have achieved very significantly. Notwithstanding the contribution of immigrants to Ireland, when we look at the composition of the boards, we see that not only are there relatively few women and even fewer female chairpersons of boards, ethnic diversity is almost entirely missing.

The Minister for Finance told me the other day about the new holistic approach taken by his Department to policy issues, which I welcome. What I want to know is whether the Taoiseach would be conscious of the issue given that he represents Dublin West where about 30% of the population is either not born in Ireland or has parents who were not born in Ireland. The Taoiseach knows that there are significant numbers of young people from a variety of ethnic backgrounds in our secondary schools, yet when it comes to public positions like boards, they see very few people like them. What is the Taoiseach going to do to address this?

The issue of civil servants on State boards has not been resolved in the context of the national children's hospital. The public servant on that board had an obligation to report to his line Minister and the Minister for Health. I do not think that has been adequately responded to by Government. The circular is clear, as is the opinion of the Comptroller and Auditor General.

When the previous Taoiseach announced various procedures for making appointments to State boards and changed them a number of years ago, he said they would be reviewed over time to check whether they were delivering better boards. The early evidence was that the new procedures were confirming that people appointed previously were overwhelmingly being viewed as suitable for reappointment, that the range of people applying for appointments was broad, but that it was uncertain whether there was any improvement in the functioning of boards. Has the Taoiseach commissioned any independent research on the operation of State boards and whether they are actively performing the role of supervising the strategic direction of State agencies and protecting the public interest? This is of particular concern in the context of the national children's hospital because, last August, the Government reappointed in full the board of the national children's hospital, and little more than six months ago, the Government expressed full confidence in the board's work. This was at a point when the Government was fully aware of the outcome of the tendering procedure overseen by the board. Then suddenly the Taoiseach and Minister for Health began calling for heads to roll.

Indeed, the chairperson was offered up as a sacrifice to stop more politically sensitive accountability. Is the Taoiseach satisfied with the procedure by which he and the Government reappointed the children's hospital board last year? What review did it conduct of their work before nodding through the reappointment of the chairperson and the board?

With regard to circular 12/10, while I may have clarified this last week, I am happy to do so again. It has been clarified that the responsibility is to report to the line Minister of the Department under which the board is established, not the Department in which the relevant public servant works. For example, if it is a health board, the responsibility is to the Minister for Health, and if it is an education board, it is to the Minister for Education and Skills, not the Department in which the public servant works, which could be the Department of Finance or the Department of the Taoiseach, or otherwise. The National Paediatric Hospital Development Board has its own code of governance, which is available on its website and which covers the whole issue of confidentiality and the need for board members to maintain collective confidentiality.

In regard to Mr. Paul Quinn, again, as I explained to the House last week, he met the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform and discussed the situation. I understand that he judged that he had no responsibility or obligation to report to the Minister for Health on the matter of the overrun, as the chairman of the board had done so.

In regard to women on State boards, we set a target of making sure that at least 40% of people on State boards were women. That has been exceeded and it is now 41% or 42%. Last year was the first year during which more than 50% of appointments were female, and we are now aiming for a higher target to go well above 40%. The focus is particularly on boards where there is gender imbalance, which can happen both ways. One will see that on many of the education, health and social care boards there is a predominance of women and very few men, whereas on finance and enterprise boards one will see a preponderance of men rather than women. Gender balance should work both ways. The focus is on evening that out across those different types of boards and going up from 40% towards 50%.

I am also leading an initiative to increase the participation of women on boards of listed private companies, where fewer than 20% of the membership are female, which is half the proportion on State boards. Now that we have exceeded our 40% target, we are in a strong position to put pressure on the private sector to do much better. I am leading that initiative.

With regard to my own Department, I am happy to correct the Deputies. I do not appoint most of the members to NESC; they are generally appointed by what we used to call social partners. Of the appointments that have occurred since I became Taoiseach, three were made by me but on the nomination of farming bodies, and all three were male, and one was made by me but on the nomination of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, and he was male. However, of the appointments I have made myself and which I had discretion over, three of the five were female, or 60%.

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