I move amendment No. 1:
In page 3, line 12, to delete "14" and substitute "7".
The effect of this amendment would be to decrease in future the number of members of this board from the 15 proposed in the Bill to eight. Eight is a perfectly adequate number, if anything it is somewhat on the large side. As I said time and again on this Bill and on its two predecessors, these enormously big boards achieve very little. An effective board is a much smaller board. It is noteworthy that some of the biggest companies here and in other countries are run by overall boards which are very much smaller than anything envisaged here. That is done with great success in boards which are trading companies with very large turnovers of perhaps billions of pounds each year. In this debate Deputy O'Rourke agreed that the size of this board was excessive and unnecessary. It was done presumably to placate various sectorial interests. Under the original Act of 1994 it was too big but it was increased further last year and it is proposed now to increase it still further. That is wrong.
It is noteworthy that the two amending Acts to the Principal Act, under which this board was set up, relate to the membership of the board and both make it bigger, as if these were major contributions to its success. They are not, if anything they probably weaken it by making it unwieldy. I am not suggesting any existing member should be removed, that is not necessary because they are appointed, but when the membership of the board falls to a figure of eight it should be maintained at that number: a chairman and seven ordinary members.
The very successful promotional boards, such as the IDA, have traditionally had six members and that is perfectly adequate. I do not think anyone would suggest it was not successful. An Bord Tráchtála has a chairman and six or seven members. Its remit would be far larger and far wider than this board which deals only with food. In effect An Bord Tráchtála deals with everything else and can do so with less than half the board membership of this board, even though this board is confined to one specific area only in its activity. Clearly there is no need for the number of members provided for. By seeking to reduce the number I am not suggesting there should be no consumer representative. There can be three or four consumer representatives among the eight members. There is nothing to stop those being appointed.
I said earlier that two years ago I put down an amendment to try to have specific consumer representation on the board but it was not accepted. It was not only the Government of the day that refused it, every other party bar my own was opposed to it. In those circumstances it had to be withdrawn as it had no prospect of success. It is clear we were correct in putting down that amendment. It should have been accepted at the time and consumer interests should have been recognised on the board from the start and not belatedly from now.
Consumer interests are being represented now only because of the BSE crisis. The Minister of State is wrong in saying this is portrayed as the Government's response to the BSE crisis. It is not being portrayed as that but this is happening, among other things, because of the BSE crisis, and because of the unwillingness by the food sector, particularly at official level, to recognise the validity of the consumer interest. Because the Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry always recognised only the producer interests to the exclusion of everybody else we have many problems today. It has now become clear that the consumer interest in particular must be recognised. The officials on the board accept this and try to operate the board's activities as best they can to take account of it but the board itself is weighted very much in a different direction and one of its weaknesses is its sheer size.
If the closest corresponding board, An Bord Tráchtála, which deals with exports which would exceed An Bord Bia level of exports by, perhaps, five, six or seven times in every field, other than food, can be successful with a board half this size, I do not see why this one cannot be successful. The cohesion of the board would be greatly assisted by the acceptance of this amendment just as the board would have been assisted by the acceptance of the amendment we put down to the 1994 Bill which was refused and which is now being inserted by this Bill.
