Ms Maria Graham:

I thank the Deputy. As he said, the critical underpinning of An Bord Pleanála is its independence. That is a principle that underpins all these issues. The Deputy asked a few questions about the rationale for the size of the board. The board has an increasing workload. Some 70% of the applications are normal appeals but there are many first instance applications between strategic infrastructure and the marine functions. The concept of having at least 15 members is to scale up the board and that allows for the quorum to be increased to three on smaller ones. The quorums are higher on others. If we have 15 members there is more potential to have a flow of people and a random selection of board members. The legislation already provides for an order to be made when the workload increases. In this instance we felt it was more appropriate for the Oireachtas to consider what the size and scale should be and to put that into legislation. The order piece is more reflective of an issue where there is a bulge of applications or something of that nature. That is why the order is already a feature of the legislative code.

In respect of the process for the recruitment of board members, we discussed the scope of the people involved at the last session. A particularly important role of the committee is to ensure the collective mix the Deputy referred to is on the board and to advise the Minister accordingly. At the moment the Public Appointments Service is running the competition for the environmental post end-to-end on our behalf and that closes next week. The head reflects that the Public Appointments Service can be involved. There are different parts, including the process. Potentially, certainly at the early stage, we are looking at a sizable increase in the board. Therefore having a committee of experts that looks at what the scale would be is useful. For example in State bodies, that can be looked at. We need to have people with financial skills, the different skills, to ensure all people do not come from the same component. The intention is to make the process far more open. Under the current process, through the panel system, we receive nominations of people but we have no sight of what happens behind the nomination process, whereas the idea here is that the committee sets the terms of what is required but there is complete openness on who may apply.