Ms Anne O'Leary:

I have. I was appointed first by the Department in October 2014 and then reappointed after five years, which is very unusual, but because of Covid, there was no availability of other directors to come on board. I think it is way too long to be on any State board. By the way, at the end of this, if the Department or the chair decides that it is time for me to step down, I will very happily do that.

I do agree with the Deputy who mentioned earlier that there should be a chartered accountant on the audit and risk committee. For the first five years I had an exceptional member of the committee, Shane Naughton, who was at the time the chief financial officer for the Financial Times.