The clerk who is very competent will make a factual assessment of the submissions. There are a number of common themes and we have to deal with what we have been given. We set out terms of reference in relation to what we would examine and we cannot stray beyond that brief. If a submission deals with an extraneous area it would not be correct for the committee to stray into that area. We will focus on the main issues. At the end of the day the opinions and recommendations expressed in the report, as stated by Deputies Wall, Carty, Crawford and Ring, have to be those of the joint committee. The buck stops here. That is our job.
I read some submissions quickly, but I have to go through others slowly to get the message. Perhaps we should divide them out among committee members. Given that there are 80 submissions, each member would get six or seven to evaluate in detail. This can be decided at our September meeting. In the meantime I encourage members to read as much as possible. It is a substantial volume of material. For those who think we will not be working during August, there is some reading to be done during August and early September.
I compliment the joint committee on having paid particular attention to this topic which is a primary focus of attention. We must complete the job in a thoughtful and well researched manner. It has been agreed that we should instruct the clerk to draft the initial report factually based on all the submissions received. We will continue our work, going through the reports as Deputy Connolly said, without losing sight of the fact that we have terms of reference in what the submissions were intended to address. If they have strayed outside the terms of reference that is another problem.
I propose we invite some of the groups who have made submissions to come in and make presentations to us. Perhaps at our second meeting on 23 September the clerk would come back with the factual analysis of the submissions prepared in report format. We would then start our input.
Our first meeting will be in early September, possibly 9 September, to consider EU scrutiny. We are trying to cover a number of roles and do the best we can. Hopefully we will have that report on 23 September. I propose that on 7 October we invite a number of those who have made written submissions to come in to make an oral submission, as we had indicated.
As Deputy Wallace said there is a huge degree of overlap. It is possible that 50 of the submissions have made the same points. We will try to take four to six groups——