Mr. John McCarthy:

Technically there is probably no reason not to. From a policy and procedural point of view, I am not sure I would be entirely happy with doing so. There is a triangular relationship between the Department, the local authority and the voluntary body. We have had situations in the past with departmental people on boards of certain kinds. There can be fuzziness in terms of relationships, reports and responsibilities. Purely, as an initial reaction, my sense would be to have a statutory regulation system that would ensure we have a quality sector without, if we can avoid it, getting into the space of having multiple responsibilities.