Dr. Mary Kelly:

I thank Senator Keane for her kind words and I hope I will have a good outcome with the board. As Deputy Humphreys noted, this is a very professional staff which has given a very good service over the years, despite the impression given by timelines. We hope to move the process along.

The members asked about a further reduction in staff numbers. Staff numbers have decreased by 20% since 2008, and at that time 50% of cases were being determined by fee per case inspectors. We are not using that process at all now, so all the case work coming to us is being done by in-house inspectors. It is not only that our staff numbers have decreased by 20% but we have also completely stopped using fee per case inspectors. There were approximately 150 such inspectors on the books at various stages at the time, so a massive amount of work has been taken out. That is why there has not been as significant a drop in our core staff.

I do not foresee a further reduction in staff and I hope that will not be the case. The employment control framework for 2012 required us to lose 16 staff between March and December and we have just about accomplished that. It will probably be done by the end of the year. We must consolidate at that point and I do not foresee any further losses.

I do not envisage any further losses happening there.

I will answer Deputy Kevin Humphreys on whether we could be self-financing, while I am on the subject of whether our salaries and allowances go down. It will speed things up a little. As I said, I do not think we can lose any more staff or that the salaries can go down. That is the baseline. I do not see any further savings. Since I joined the board I have been amazed at how little money we spend on operations compared to the organisation I worked in previously. There is very little discretionary spend in An Bord Pleanála. Everything is really cut to the bone. There might be small amounts here and there but I do not see a major reduction.

In terms of trying to become self-financing or moving in that direction, we could do that but the balance is whether we would discourage development completely if people were not able to afford to come through the process. With strategic infrastructure development, for example, there is an up-front fee of €100,000 to put a strategic development to the board. If the board does not use all that money it gives a refund, but we are talking about that ballpark figure in terms of a costing. If that was increased to €200,000, people trying to develop wind farms or other strategic infrastructure would not be very happy. Similarly, our appeal fees are set at a particular level, but those involve ordinary people in ordinary houses appealing cases. I do not believe it would bear much of an increase.