Ms Alma Walsh:

We have received the statement. It reflects a lot of what was raised and discussed already at the working group that was convened last May. Some of the recommendations relate to seeking legal advice on the inurement clauses that are applied. There is also a recommendation on the terms of reference. On a point of clarification, terms of reference were circulated to the working group in May and were agreed at the inception meeting.

The members of the committee were provided with those in the Minister's circulated statement and so will have had sight of them. We have read and reviewed those recommendations and they will feed into the work of the working group. We agree with some of them and will certainly be taking them back to the working group. There are many process-related issues but there is also a need to reflect on the debates held over the course of November and December and the questions raised here today. It encompasses all of the planning process, policy and some of the other related service issues. We hope to aggregate some of those into the correct stream, whether that is a section 28 guideline or something that can be directly addressed now within the process. We will seek to do that as soon as possible.