Professor Philip Nolan:

I will very briefly go back to diversity and breadth of skills. What the board needs to be able to do is deliver a strategy that is internationally credible and competitive, whereby peers internationally would say that agency is going to deliver for its country and we respect it. It needs to be able to allocate the funding in a manner that is entirely based on the quality of the proposal and not swayed by any other consideration, and it needs to provide for the good governance of a public agency so that there is no question about propriety, value for money and so on within the operations of the agency. That brings us back to the fact that a broad range of skills is required on the board. To my mind, that would include largely international representation of active researchers to say we know how research is done internationally and this is a valid strategy and a valid allocation of funding.

In talking to our peers around Europe, all of them are going through some form of reform and it is about bringing that broad diversity of skills on to their governance board, although there may be councils of varying roles or sub-boards with varying roles reporting in to the overall board to give the kind of advice Dr. Lillis spoke about.