Senator Gerard Craughwell- speech from 6 Jul 2022
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Transcript
Very quickly, Minister, you're dead right. Anybody appointed to a board in this country is subject to scrutiny from both within this house, the lower house and anywhere else you want in society. But I want to put on the record the fact that chairmen of boards are frequently brought in before Oireachtas committees and we have absolutely no say in whether their appointment is sanctioned or not. It is purely a hello, nice to meet you meeting. And I put it on the record of committees several times. It is actually a waste of the chairman's time and of the committee's time. We do not scrutinise people appointed by ministers. I fully appreciate the role of the minister in making appointments, but I also believe that this house and the oil has a role in overseeing the work of the minister. And where we can't do that, there's a flaw. And that flaw doesn't exist in just this bill. It exists in the system right across the Oireachtas. We have a minister makes an appointment and no matter how repugnant to the public that appointment may be, nobody can change that other than the minister himself of the day.