Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There are four vacancies in NESC that I intend to fill in the next two to three weeks. There were 31 applications in total which were short-listed to eight by the Public Appointments Service. It passed these on to me with the various curricula vitae. My intention in approaching these appointments is to have regard, first, to gender balance as there is a degree of gender imbalance in NESC at present. Deputies will be aware that 52% of people appointed to State boards last year were female while 48% were male. I intend to ensure two of those four appointments go to women who were short-listed.

They largely come from academic institutions. Accordingly, I do not want to appoint all four from the one part of the country or the one academic institution. I will have regard to the advantages of having people from different parts of the country and, perhaps, even having members from Northern Ireland or outside of the country. Having representation from Northern Ireland or international expertise could add to the skill mix and skill base that NESC has.

I tend to see NESC as a think tank for the Government. We have many different ways of engaging with different partners through the labour employer economic forum, LEEF, the national dialogue and various other mechanisms. NESC has produced some good work over the past several months. For those who have not read it, I commend its report on the circular economy. It is worth reading. I read its draft land use study over the past couple of days, which it will publish soon. It provides valuable analysis as to what additional policy actions on better use of land around the country could be put in place.

The Government has taken two actions on derelict sites. The first was the creation of the derelict site levy, which is starting to take effect. It was never going to take effect overnight because we were required for constitutional and common-sense reasons to give people notice that their sites would be levied if they did not develop them. That is kicking in now this year. Anecdotally, I am told it is making a difference in some places in terms of a vacant sites being brought into use.

We also announced we intend to establish a land regeneration agency, which is part of Project Ireland 2040. We will have more details on that in the coming weeks and months ahead. Our intention is to use that agency to take existing State land and acquire additional land for development. It would be following something similar to the model being used by the Grangegorman Development Agency and, before it lost the run of itself, the Dublin Docklands Development Authority in actually using State lands and adding private land to that to make it available for development.

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