Mr. Peter Mullan:

Taking it at its highest level, various governance changes took place following the commencement of the Act. For the previous board, there was a selection process but they were essentially appointments of the Minister. One of the effects of the Act is that the governing board now goes through the Public Appointments Service. Following a process, six of them were appointed and then the Minister appointed Paul Reid as the governing chair.

On the decision-makers, the commissioners, again the Act is very clear on that. The governing board will request the Public Appointments Service to make decisions on that and the board will then make the appointments. The political input from the Minister that was involved for many years has now been taken away and it has been handed over to the governing board to finalise the decisions, using the Public Appointments Service we are all familiar with to recruit the governing board and commissioners. The competitions for inspectors are run by our internal HR. We are an employer of choice. Most planning inspectors have to have five or six years' experience. Senior planning inspectors have to have seven years' experience. We hire those. Independence and integrity are things we value.

On delays with housing, the Deputy mentioned three categories. I think I have dealt with the three of them. As the Deputy said, many questions have been answered. Regarding LRD, there is 100% compliance and we will continue to meet that objective. For SHDs, there was a large backlog. We have systematically worked through that and are hopeful that by quarter 3 and 4 we will have cleared the number of cases that are in the organisation. We will supply the figures to the committee in relation to our decision-making around that.

The Deputy asked about future planning decisions and re-establishing the reputation of, and public confidence in, the organisation. This is part of that process. We are starting to do far more public engagement with stakeholders. We welcome the opportunity to address the committee on the workings of our organisation. We met members' colleagues from the housing committee this morning. We will end up with an invite to the housing committee as a result of that and we welcome those opportunities. There is an opportunity for us to go out more into the public and assure it we are doing the job we have been tasked to do, which is making planning decisions within the statutory objective period. We are working progressively towards that and meeting the timelines in relation to it.

We have our internal audit system, which works with our audit and risk committee. One of the functions of the new governing board will be to look at the performance objectives of the organisation. They are independent. I will be reporting to them on behalf of the entire organisation. I am now accountable to them. This is a new classic corporate structure that has been put in place under the new Act. As CEO, I will be responsible to them. They will have oversight of the performance delivery objectives of the organisation. The quality of the decision-making will be part of that. They will not be commenting on individual decisions - that is not appropriate - but they will talk about it in general terms and we will be happy to engage with them on that.