Mr. John O'Connor:

I am not taking the credit for it alone but there were debates around it. There was a great deal of criticism of delays and uncertainty about critical infrastructure projects getting done and it was seen to be putting the country at a disadvantage competitively and so forth. There was a lot of debate for a few years about how this would be resolved. The position for all major infrastructure projects was that an application was made locally and invariably it was appealed. It ended with An Bord Pleanála and this involved a major lapse in time and many investors were unhappy about that. The decision was to have a one stage procedure and there was a view at the time, which was prominent in some quarters, that a new body should be set up to give consent quickly for these projects but I engaged with the Minister and I was able to persuade him that it would be better to expand the role of An Bord Pleanála and to assign that function to the board, which would give reasonably quick decisions on these projects. That has happened by and large.