Mr. Robert Watt:

Certainly, when it comes to appointments to State boards, we now have stateboards.ie, which is a process run by the Public Appointments Service, PAS, where the focus is on the job, the competencies and the people and we now are seeing people coming forward who never would have been in a position to get an appointment on a board based on the previous system. Consequently, when it comes to much greater external involvement, many more people are coming in now and coming forward because they perceive that the process is based on one's ability and is a meritocratic process.

The governance framework provides that the management board is made up of people in the Department, as well as the press officer and press advisers, but one issue about management boards and Departments about which there has been debate is whether there should be non-executive directors on the management boards of Departments, as has been tried in the United Kingdom. We will return to this issue of whether it would help were external people to sit on management boards and work with the Secretary General, the Assistant Secretaries and the management team. It is something we have not yet embraced but it is happening in the United Kingdom. The results are a little mixed, depending on the Department, but it is something to which we may well return.