Ms Oonagh Buckley:

That is an excellent question. The second I was asked to do this job, I said that I would of course do it because An Bord Pleanála is too important to be allowed to fail. I believe it to be in an eminently fixable situation. Part of my job over the past seven weeks has been to say frequently and thoroughly to the team and staff of the board that they are not on their own and that the cavalry is coming over the hill.

With me came three civil servants, who, in fairness to them, stuck up their hands to volunteer to come to the board. But for their arrival, it would be down to me and two functioning members of the board as of Friday. That would be catastrophic altogether. I am working very strongly with the Department and pushing it to do another round seeking volunteers. As it is discovering, I have not lost any of my forcefulness over the intervening decades. We will be targeting, in the first instance, the Civil Service and local authority service. From the latter, I will be getting people with planning expertise and other forms of expertise. I need a mixture of skills on the board. The interim appointments, while controversial in their own right, will allow us to populate the board and have key decision makers in place as quickly as possible.

The Department, which in fairness to it has a lot on its plate, is working on starting the process of appointing permanent members, including a permanent chairperson, because my appointment is for only a year. We will need to bring in interim members and replace them over time with permanent members who will come through what I presume will be the new State board-led or Public Appointments Service-led process, which will be critical to ensuring people have confidence in the integrity of the system.

I have a newly appointed deputy chairperson, Mr. Chris McGarry, who is working very hard with me to manage the workload of the board. We are seeking to prioritise in a way that meets the requirements while also upskilling the three brand-new board members, who joined us in January. They need to learn their trade as well. They are already starting to work on planning decisions. They have taken to it like ducks to water but, in fairness, it is only month one.

As I have mentioned, I will start to take part in making board decisions shortly. I have not done so up to now because I have been focusing on the CEO side of my job.