Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

To be very clear, and again we teased through this on Committee Stage, which the transcripts will show, it is absolutely the intention that there will be researcher input into the work of the new agency. That is beyond question. There are structures within the legislation, including what would effectively operate as a subcommittee of the board, which will be overwhelmingly dominated by people who are actively involved in research. There is no doubt about that. However, the HSE board is not a board made up of doctors and nurses because they work in the health service. It is made up of people who can look after the entire governance of significant levels of State investment. I fully accept we have a difference of opinion on this. However, we do have competency-based boards in Ireland that we have advertised through the public appointments process. We have done that. The booklet, which is there for all to see, will have very clearly outlined the range of criteria we are looking for on that board and those criteria will, of course, include people with practical research experience.

It is about trying to get a balanced board that covers a whole range of competencies that would be required to run a major new State agency. However, the legislation absolutely provides for the establishment of councils which offers another avenue for researchers to be able to input into this. There will be more opportunities than ever before for the research community to feed in. I can assure the Deputy of that. We get this idea any time legislation is brought forward - and it is a valid area of debate - that X organisation, group or profession should have Y number of seats on a board. In general, the approach taken in the past several years in Ireland has been that we are not overly prescriptive in allocating seats. It is more that we set out the criteria that is needed on a board, advertise it publicly, put it through a public appointment service, which is an independent process, and the names come back from Government on that.

On the broader issues that have been raised by Deputy Boyd Barrett, I say very clearly for the record, it is not in any way to dismiss their importance. It is simply a question of the right vehicle for the agency that is being established, as distinct from other policy matters for Government around PhD stipends and the likes.

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