The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland (RPII) critical review group was convened in May 2012 under the chairmanship of my Department (Mr. John McCarthy, Assistant Secretary) , building on a process of prior consideration of the potential for a merger between the two organisations. The membership of the group comprises representatives of my Department and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, together with the Director General of the EPA and the Chief Executive of the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland. My Department supported the work of the group, which met on two occasions and carried out other elements of its work electronically.
On 31 October 2012, my colleague, the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, published an update on the Government’s overall agency rationalisation programme, in which the merger of the EPA and the RPII was included in a list of mergers to be undertaken in 2013, although it was noted that this merger may require a longer timeframe. My Department will now be working closely with the EPA, the RPII and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform to develop a programme for the merger process, taking particular account of the priority which must attach to the work of my Department and both agencies in supporting Ireland’s Presidency of the European Union in the first half of 2013.
