Ms Carole Pollard:

I wish to come back on one matter Deputy Ó Broin raised concerning board membership. He asked whether the board membership is strong enough and whether there will be a consumer voice on the board. I will give my opinion on this. I sat on the technical assessment board, which is one of the statutory boards administering the register of architects, for three years as an architect and an RIAI nominee. We have recommended, as Ms Kathryn Meghen said, that the balance on the boards for the CIRI Bill be amended because there should be more ministerial nominees than professional nominees. Definitely, in my experience, on the technical assessment board - obviously, I cannot speak for all the boards - there was a very strong consumer voice, and the chair, who was a barrister, was a very strong advocate for the consumer in all the decisions made by the board. Furthermore, the quorum is always primarily made up of the ministerial nominees on the board and, in that way, I do feel there is an independence to the board that might not be automatically seen when one considers that CIRI is administered by the Construction Industry Federation. Those boards do have an autonomy and an independence because of their make-up and chairs and they function very well. Like everything, we can have all the rules we want, but it is only when they are applied properly that a system functions. That is the really important thing about the CIRI Bill - that the rules are robust and applied properly. Then the RIAI certainly would not have concerns about the independence of the CIRI Bill in that regard.