Caít Keane (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The staff was reduced from 182 to 146, or by 20%, and applications have decreased by 28%. I know the rates cannot be reduced man for man but will there be a further reduction because applications are going down? A question was asked regarding quarries and I will not dwell on that. However, there is the issue of disused quarries and change of use applications. I presume this would come under the habitats directive and is similar to the quarries directive.

The amending planning development Act made a change to the number of people who can make a decision and this system is being used to get rid of the backlog. A local authority may have a planner, assistant planner, people involved with roads, housing and communities, and each department has an input. How can two people on the board make a similar decision? There must be criteria on how the decision is made. Two people are making a decision where seven or eight people have made the decision before them.

With regard to decisions confirmed by An Bord Pleanála, the best in the class was Kerry; I will not name the worst but it is in the report. The reversed decisions are documented, including the best and worst offenders. Does the board take note of the local authorities performing well and the criteria being used or those which are performing very badly? There is a significant discrepancy. Some 75% of the relevant decisions were reversed in one county and only 11% are reversed in another county. A teacher in a classroom with pupil performance as diverse as that would pose the question of where the process is going wrong.

The rate of reversal appears to be the same, more or less, every year. There is the question of whether a certain mark has to be hit but I do not presume the board could operate in such a way. The same question applies when we see the percentage of failures in a leaving or junior certificate or the number of pupils getting an A, B or C. I would not expect the rate of reversal to come out the same every year, more or less, as there should be differences.

The highest level of legal expenditure was in 2011 and it was even higher than it was in 2007. As the number of developments has decreased, I would have expected this expenditure to have gone the other way. I am only going on the information put on screen and I presume the figures are in the report. I would like to see them and the reasons for the high expenditure. The same applies to other expenditure figures. We can consider pay expenditure compared to total expenditure and non-pay expenditure. It has increased since 2007, although I would have expected it to go the other way. Why is the number increasing?

I will not dwell on pre-application consultations.