Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

No, not board members. The board members are there, but it is a sub-committee of the board which can bring on additional expertise. Let us say it wants to avail of the services of actuaries or corporate lawyers, that is okay. We already have a board and the board is talking to the chief executive all the time. Essentially, the board's job is to hold the chief executive to account and to set the strategy for an organisation. Those are two of the big issues. Separate to that, one has an audit committee, which is giving financial advice on the functions of the board. It is giving governance advice on the structures and it is giving financial advice to the chief executive. If the objective is for that to be essentially independent of the board, and providing a second pair of eyes, if it is full of board members then that does not happen. It is essentially the board reporting to itself about its own functions.