Ms Attracta U? Bhroin:

Basically, foreshore is land that is intermittently covered by the sea. That is why there is that proposal to go to the Act that Ms Dubsky mentioned. However, the other issue is that this actually refers to the airspace above. Classically, when we talk about development on land, it is the land above the development that is necessary to be occupied, but nothing above that. What is actually being proposed here is airspace. The security implications of that are huge. This is something that warrants an awful lot more consideration and much more discussion. Clarity is needed, but there was a lot of merit in Deputy McAuliffe’s remarks. We would like to look at this separately and time to reflect on what the Department said this morning and revert further, if we may. We did not find sufficient clarity in relation to the rationale for what exactly is the express issue that is trying to be solved here.

I thank the Deputy for his remarks. On his specific questions, distribution and balance is absolutely key. This is one of the concerns that we have. The Chairman, Deputy Matthews, referred to it in his question related to the panel that the Minister will draw from under this new scheme. Basically, if there is a panel with X number of members that was originally balanced and there is no control over unforeseen circumstances, for example, resignation of a board member, the same panel is being drawn from. There is not necessarily going to be a balanced set of people in that panel. It is entirely at the Minister’s discretion to basically refresh that panel. Balance across the board is absolutely key and it is not provided for properly in this Act.

On the organisations that are currently in the panel influencing the make up of the committee, it was very welcome this morning that it was acknowledged that there was total discretion on the make-up of the committee, total discretion on the make-up of the regulations but, even more importantly, the Minister has discretion not to go with the committee but actually provide for some entirely different process. I welcomed Ms Graham’s remarks this morning on the need for transparency and consistency and her concerns in respect of the panel system. However, I would see exactly and indeed many more of those issues in respect of what is proposed in relation to the provisions for this new committee. Our recommendation is firmly to improve the panel system rather than to go down this highly discretionary route. Even in terms of the comments that were made on the profile of people making up that committee, that was quite a concern this morning in terms of the independence of it and the remove from the Department and Government.