Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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301. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government if he will confirm that the Public Appointments Service was used in the appointment of members to the interim Land Development Agency board in 2019 and the full LDA board in 2021; and, if not, if he will outline the process that was used to generate the list of names from which Ministers selected the members of the interim and full board of the LDA. [3001/23]

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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The Land Development Agency (LDA) was established under the Land Development Agency (Establishment) Order 2018 as amended by the Land Development Agency (Amendment) Order 2018. In December 2018, the Government gave a derogation to the Guidelines on the Appointment to State Boards, to allow for the appointment of an interim LDA Board outside of the Stateboards.ie process until the LDA’s primary legislation was passed to establish it as a commercial state agency. An interim Board was appointed in January 2019 in line with Article 6 of the Establishment Order which provided that the Minister could appoint between 6 and 10 persons to the Board, including representatives of certain Government Departments, agencies and the local government sector.

The Land Development Agency Act 2021, which was signed into law in July 2021, provides for the establishment of a new commercial LDA Designated Activity Company (DAC). In December 2021, the Government gave a derogation to the Guidelines on the Appointment to State Boards, to allow for the appointment of three board members from the interim LDA Board to the new commercial LDA DAC Board to aid the transition from the interim LDA body to the new LDA DAC from a corporate governance continuity perspective. The remaining ordinary board member positions, as well as the Chairperson position, on the commercial LDA DAC Board were filled following open competitions through the State Boards process.