Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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The Chairman talked about the timeframe and we have quite a bit of work to do in that timeframe. When we are hearing from those who will help guide and shape our opinions on how we bring forward the frameworks, as a default we should seek written submissions as opposed to hearings before the committee. Where the written submissions require more interrogation or examination of witnesses, we should bring them in. However, if we try to host a number of hearings in that period we will just clog ourselves up in a major way.

We are not reinventing the wheel; this has been done in many other jurisdictions. We have seen the table laid out in terms of how many of them tick different boxes. Sweden and Austria have ticked all five boxes. We need to engage with those institutions and that can be done through teleconferencing, as we have done in the finance committee, or by written submission. If we need to do this, it is not a case of flying over there or flying them over here, we can link up by video at a later stage when we start to form our opinions.

Following up on what Deputy Burton said, I do not think it is the role of this committee to examine the expenditure or revenue proposals. The role of the committee is to agree a framework for a new committee to do exactly that work. We need to stay away from that at this point. We need to figure out-----