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Advocates of an
honours system believe it would recognise and confer distinction on men and women
who have made a special contribution in various spheres to Irish life. The British
model is most commonly cited where a wide range of honours can be bestowed on
people as diverse as footballers, school principals, matrons or fire chiefs. The
Prime Minister and his party colleagues all have a substantial input into ensuring
that worthy subjects of Her Majesty are recognised.
No Irish government has grasped the nettle of publicly recognising citizens of
merit, but then why should they when they have an elaborate unofficial system
of reward already for those who want it? Ireland's very special honours system
is the appointment of members of State boards. There are over 130 State bodies,
almost all of which have at least some political nominees on their boards. In
addition to these, there is a further long list of departmental advisory committees
and boards dealing with issues ranging from censorship to visiting prisons.
From the mighty Aer Lingus to the humble Castlerea Prison Visiting Committee,
our politicians can confer prestige, recognition and financial reward on those
they feel deserving of selection.
In recent weeks, the lobby group Women in Technology and Science (WITS) has pointed
out that women are under-represented on State boards because of "institutionalised
sexism". WITS has launched a talent bank of qualified females to suggest
to the government for appointment. This is very worthy, and has been done before
by other women's groups, but they will have little chance of success against the
informal network of lobbying and promotion that takes place within a political
party and among ministers.
Any ambitious woman (or man) who wants to be appointed to a State board would
be better advised to join Fianna Fdil or the PDs, catch the eye of a few ministers
and backbenchers, do some work for the party, maybe make a modest financial contribution
and lobby discreetly but relentlessly. An active and competent woman in either
of these parties has a better than average chance of appointment because of the
40% gender quotas for State boards which ministers aspire to meeting.
Since women are under-represented in political parties, it is not surprising that
they only make up about 25% of the membership of boards surveyed by WITS.
The board of Aer Lingus (with only one woman), with its generous travel perks,
has always been the highest honour. Appointment confers the informal distinction
of "you have done great service to the party and for this we are well pleased".
Fianna Fail currently honours the Taoiseach's constituency right-hand man, Chris
Wall and party fundraiser Des Richardson. Before that, Fine Gael recognised its
own fund-raiser the late David Austin and economic guru Jim O'Leary.
While the boards of major commercial State companies are generally (but not always)
filled by ministers with people of at least some business achievement, lower down
the scale, prison-visiting committees provide a much greater scope for rewarding
deserving party members with generous travelling expenses to prisons far away
from where they live.
In this way, people who live in Cork and Limerick visit prisons in Dublin, and
vice versa. Ministers and party activists know the score - one former Minister
for justice was berated by an indignant party member who was appointed to visit
Cork Prison but lived in Cork and therefore was entitled to only negligible travel
expenses.
In coalition governments, a strict ratio is adhered to between the parties to
ensure that appointments are made in proportion to their relative strengths.
In a two-party coalition such as the present government, this system is relatively
straightforward to manage and the PDs generally have at least one nominee on any
board of substance. When the three-party Rainbow coalition was in government up
to 1997, a more complicated ratio for dividing jobs between the three parties
had to be maintained.
Occasionally, men and women of real ability can pull off the difficult feat of
being appointed by one government and re-appointed by another. To do this, they
have to have impressed their fellow board members, civil servants and different
Ministers. Former Fine Gael strategist Michael O'Reilly, for example, managed
this at the National Gallery where he served briefly as chairman.
While it would be desirable that the system of appointments to State boards was
removed from political control and patronage, in the absence of any other reward
mechanism it is likely - for the foreseeable future - to remain the principal
way in which recognition can be conferred on those who keep our political parties
ticking over.
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