Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The difference between what the Minister of State is proposing and what we are proposing, and I hope the Minister of State will speak to it and explain as he still has not done that, is that while he is making a statement that it will be independent in its functions, it still will have the ex officiomembers rather than what was proposed to him by us and the environmental lobby. We proposed that the agencies he wishes to designate as ex officiomembers would be essentially a secretariat technical support for an independent body of people, similar to the Fiscal Advisory Council. It is not that these people and agencies would not have an input, but that they would not be ex officiomembers of the advisory committee. They would be technical support to the advisory committee. That is an important distinction. While making some concession to our concerns, the Minister has not gone the full way towards the Fiscal Advisory Council model but has retained some element of the insiders, as it were, being a permanent part of this advisory body.

The real point is that this is not full independence when that was what was being sought, although with technical support from bodies such as the agencies referred to in the Bill. Perhaps the Minister of State can persuade us otherwise, but what we are proposing is still superior to what he is proposing.

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