Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will speak on amendment No. 67. The membership of the advisory council is set out in the Bill. The ex officiomembers include the director general of the agency, the chief executive of the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, the director of Teagasc and the director of the ESRI. The key point, however, is what is stated in the report from the all-party environment committee. It states:

To carry out these functions, [that is, to be independent and to submit annual reports and so forth to the Minister] the Expert Advisory Body requires a high degree of independence and to be able to draw on appropriate technical support from the relevant public service departments. The model of the Fiscal Advisory Council is seen as appropriate to achieve this. As with the Fiscal Advisory Council, the Expert Advisory Body requires to be able to publish its own reports independent of government. Its independence [and this is key] also requires that it have no ex-officiomembers, but be supported by a small technical secretariat as proposed by National Economic and Social Council. This 'Office of Climate Change' would include the officials currently proposed in Head 6 of the Bill and be chaired by the Director General of the Environmental Protection Agency.

The difference is that the former Minister, Mr. Hogan, the current Minister, Deputy Alan Kelly, and the Minister of State, Deputy Coffey, have included those people as ex officiomembers of the council, instead of having the people on an independent panel to advise. The environment committee, which was representative of all parties including Fine Gael and the Labour Party, examined this carefully and there was a long discussion about it in the summer of 2013 down in the bunker, or the committee rooms. That level of independence, modelled on the Fiscal Advisory Council, is required but the Minister has made what should be the expert advisory panel and these people who should be ex officiomembers all one and the same. That is the issue, and it is the reason I tabled amendment No. 67 - other Deputies have tabled similar amendments - and amendment No. 70, which we will discuss later.

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