Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 1 July 2021

Public Accounts Committee

Higher Education Authority: Financial Statements 2019

9:30 am

Mr. William Beausang:

I will just very quickly respond to the Deputy's question to Dr. Wall. The review has essentially been carried out through the consultation process, leading to the publication of the general scheme of a Bill. I think that Bill will be subject to pre-legislative scrutiny in July and certainly the Minister is anxious to have a Bill enacted by the end of the year. Just as the Deputy said, the priority - or one of the priorities, in the interest of securing stronger governance of HEIs is to look at governing structures which are, as the Deputy said, very large and sometimes quite intractable when it comes to providing effective oversight. The objective is that each HEI would have an independent chair, a majority of external members and competency-based membership to ensure it was equipped to address the very complex issues HEIs are called upon to look at.

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