Mr. Gavin Lawlor:

I will be very brief. I agree on the committee system. It is not a bad idea to keep the panel system to contribute towards the committee. The idea in terms of the Department, which the IPI would welcome, is that there is a difficulty for ordinary members outside of the panel to get nominated onto the board because they have to be put forward from one of the representative bodies. There may be people who have a key interest in becoming a board member and who may fit one of the key disciplines that the legislation is looking to recognise but do not have a mechanism to get there. If there is a more open competition-type style process where people can put forward a CV - for example, nominations for the board are advertised and people can put in a CV - the make-up of the committee is influenced then to get that lay and civic broad-brush spectrum that we all want. I think we would echo exactly what Ms Uí Bhroin said. To get that, we use the nomination panels to nominate people onto that committee. That might be a very good way to solve that potential. I think the intention is there to create a transparent system, from what we can read and that is what is expressed. Obviously, everybody has the same concern that it potentially might not end up as transparent and the Minister may have too much power to pick his own team, so to speak.

In terms of reducing the board, it is just that there is a uncertainty in relation to the way that the legislation is framed. If it is the case that the normal board is 14 members, that is fine. If they need the Minister to bring it up and down, so be it. Our concern is in relation to the expertise. In the same way as Ms Uí Bhroin said that they want to see a balance, so does the IPI. We think that there has to be a balance and perhaps the way to do it is at least specify some key expertise that should be there, such as engineering, architecture, planning, ecology, hydrology, law, etc., so that at least one member of the board would have an expertise in that area. If the board has two people who are ecologists, two planners or two architects, so be it. At least there is one of each type of profession there. Our concern is that we would not lose expertise.