Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

If I may speak generally, this is not a Bill that should be dealt with in any kind of party political way. The Government should not be trying to force anything through that is in any way inappropriate. I am very anxious to work with other Deputies to get the legislation right. We are talking about our planning structures and procedures. My only goal is to ensure that we have as much transparency, accountability and proper decision-making and planning as possible. That applies to transportation matters, working with the National Transport Authority or Transport Infrastructure Ireland, TII. It also applies to seeking commonality of thought when we are putting together county and city development plans and local area plans, with transport considerations and so on.

I ask the Deputies not to interpret the fact that we could not take on these amendments as us not wanting to talk about them. It was just a timing issue. The same goes for some of the other Deputies who may want to try to amend or improve proposed amendments. I will happily facilitate meetings to tease through some of these issues so that we can try to get as much consensus as possible on Report Stage, within reason, obviously. I did get a briefing on Deputy Casey's amendments earlier. We did not have time to get responses so they were not accepted. We will certainly tease through all of them with the Deputies before Report Stage. Either I can introduce the amendments or the Deputy can, I have no problem once we can get agreement on them.