Mr. David Walsh:

On the housing division of An Bord Pleanála, it seems like it has taken forever to get this up and running. As the Secretary General said, 10 May 2017 is the start date. I will try to give a sense of what has happened since the Bill was enacted before Christmas. As soon as we came back after the Christmas break, intense negotiations took place between the Department, the board and local authorities on key issues of how the interaction would happen. The last thing we wanted to do was to push something in that was half-thought through, that did not have the actual structures and processes in order that the local government sector would know what its job or role was to feed in and likewise, that the board would have the structures in place to manage the first applications as soon as they came through, as well as the pre-application processes. Two elements flow from those discussions. One was engagement around the fees issue. As the legislation sets out, the board outlines and agrees what its fees structure should be. On foot of the Minister approving that, it was published on 15 March for an eight-week period - that eight-week notice is specified in the Bill to allow people to consider it - and that is how 10 May was arrived at as a start date. We had discussions with the local government sector and agreed that all fees would be on a 50-50 spread so that the share of fees coming in for the different scales and types of projects coming through would be shared equally between the local government sector and the board itself. I do not have a copy of the fees but I would be happy to send it on for circulation to members.