Malcolm Noonan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Section 152 is a major addition to the legal mechanisms for ensuring that works and activities regulated under the legislation are carried out to the appropriate standard. It enables a licensing authority to require an applicant to have his or her competence assessed through procedures set out in regulations. This is especially relevant to ensuring that specialist activities such as archaeological excavation are only carried out by properly skilled practitioners.

Amendments were made in the Dáil to ensure that assessment of competence provisions are applicable to persons who are going to undertake, for example, professional supervision of licensed works to a monument, even where such supervision is not, of itself, a licensable activity under the Bill.

Clarity is also provided that the Minister of the day, in setting out in regulations who will carry out the assessments of competence, may do so by reference to categories of person who may do the assessments.