Mr. Gerry Kearney:

I will take some of the questions and my colleague will take others.

On the Senator's first point about the powers of the Minister, this was raised at the board and we had a number of questions in particular regarding head 9.3 about where was the precedent for this and how does it work in practice. As the committee heard, the Department responded by quoting section 5(3). We saw the other exercise of powers around the heads as fairly consistent with statutory provision, with the exception of heads 23 and 34, where flexibility and agility is needed in staff numbers and hiring. We need more space there.

The next question we asked about head 9.3 was how consistent this was with the provisions and requirements on other national institutions. We did not want to be oppressed by provision for ministerial direction. If these were standard provisions, our sense was that these were legacy provisions and we could see considerable benefits in them being looked at afresh. That was reflected in our deliberations.