Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I acknowledge local authority members being eligible to apply to be members of this board.I also acknowledge that is progress on the issue of local authority members and it is something I know that everybody across the House has called for and that issue was highlighted in Bill after Bill. It is good to hear there has been a shift.

I hope this is an example of how the way we have done things can be slightly changed and improved and I hope we will see similar shifts and improvements. To be clear, we are not necessarily speaking about X or Y academic qualifications; we are speaking about that diversity of representation. There are areas identified in the Bill and people would have to have expertise in two or more of these areas. The danger is that unless we clarify we want diversity and we do not want to end up with all of the board representing the same two or three areas of expertise and the other five areas of potential expertise named in the Bill having nobody represent them, we will have problems. There were issues in the past. For example, the previous climate advisory council - I emphasise not the current one - had a pile of economists on it and no scientists at all. There was nobody with an expertise in environmental science of any kind on the council, yet there were a number of economists and that was who was giving advice to the State about its policies on climate at a time we failed to deliver on climate change. It does matter. I take hope that there was an aspiration towards diversity from the Minister of State. However, unless we clarify in the way the board is being set up that we want diversity, unfortunately the experience has been that we sometimes do not get that. I will table more amendments on Report Stage, which at least, even if the Minister of State does not agree with my suggested numbers or prescriptions, would ensure all of those skill areas listed by him will be represented on the board in some form. It will ensure we will not end up with simply five, six or seven board members all representing one or two particular areas of focus or expertise and major gaps that will affect the quality of the work done by the board in the future.