Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

It was my understanding that some of the oversight would be transferred to the Minister. Trust is the big issue.

The EPA sometimes, because of its function in dealing with matters, is trying to curtail activities. We will see this with the climate action and low carbon development Bill where we will be changing consumers' habits. We will be dealing with fairly big issues, such as, possibly, genetically modified food, where the EPA will be under public scrutiny. The maintenance of the trust of such organisations as the Environmental Protection Agency is all the more valuable by virtue of the fact that it is an independent separate body. In the absence of that, the fact that the RPII could be pointed to as having an independent function within the EPA would be the least that we could do to maintain some degree of public trust.

This will happen increasingly. Last summer, we spent more than a week in here dealing with the pre-legislative stage of the climate action and low carbon development Bill. It is clear there will be fairly serious functions for the EPA as a monitoring organisation. That cannot be left outside the door in terms of maintaining that public trust. That is one of the main reasons we should maintain a key independent self-contained organisational structure.

The Minister of State might let me know what is being saved as a consequence of doing this. If we are giving away something that is an intangible, it is important to understand that at least there are tangible returns on it.