Professor Philip Nolan:

It is based on the experience we have. The governance structures in the HEA, IRC and SFI are robust and they can make hard decisions when they need to be made. There is no State agency that could not do a better job of listening to the community it serves. We are always learning the lesson that we might not have picked up all of the feedback we need to have picked up. The notion of having councils to advise the board, which are embedded in the system and in very close contact with it, is a really useful reinforcement of something every State agency should be doing, namely, consulting on an ongoing basis and in a structured way the community it serves.