Barry Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Some developments, whether residential, commercial or infrastructural, can achieve permission by virtue of the development plan that is in vogue at the time of the application. By the time it goes through system, which caters for judicial review and up to a five-year delay in this country, a new plan may well have been adjudicated on. The application may have no relevance to the new plan and the new plan takes precedence over the plan under which that application was made. Stakeholders and bodies such as the ESRI need to be identifying and highlighting these issues, rather than us alone doing it, in order to bring the public to accept the changes that need to happen.