Mr. Niall Cussen:

We are strengthening the staffing of local authorities as part of the broader action plan on housing and other measures and we have approved some 600 posts for a wide range of professional and administrative positions. Local authorities are well engaged in the process and the Deputy will be familiar with this from his own local authority area. It is a constant process. We are very quickly turning around requests from local authorities to fill posts and we constantly interact with local government and support its work to increase staff complements.

There was a question on the capacity of An Bord Pleanála. The board has long had the strength and capacity to handle large planning applications. It used to have a large housing projects team and, given the fact that the vast majority of large housing applications take place in Dublin, there is strong merit in creating such a dedicated team within the board for this purpose. It would know the whole area of housing policy and, rather than be fragmented across four local authorities in the Dublin area and eight in the wider Dublin area, it would have a singular focus on getting high-quality developments in good locations and would ensure a high-quality environment for the people who are most important in all of this, namely, the people who live there. It is about efficiency and economies of scale and the need to make sure that the people who deal with the cases do so on an ongoing basis and are familiar with all the technical issues that may arise.