Ms Laura Burke:

The board of the agency is different to the boards of other organisations in that it is an executive board. Each board member is an executive and it is a full-time job. The first thing I should say is that all travel and subsistence is paid in accordance with the Department of Finance codes. On where board members would be going, for example, we have five regional offices around the country so board members would be going to those offices and meeting up with their staff. As each of the teams has a staff complement of approximately 100 people, they have to meet them and visit them. At an international level, there are EU meetings, there are meetings of the European Environment Agency where the EPA is very active, in the context of Brexit in particular we meet our UK colleagues to ensure consistency of work and we also meet other EU colleagues. It is in the normal course of their everyday work, which, as I said, is different.