Mr. Niall Cussen:

The Minister, Deputy Coveney, has made it very clear at the 18 events that were held as part of the initial public consultation stages on the national planning framework, NPF, that an approach of one for everybody in the audience is not the way forward. The evidence of that is overwhelming. One of the criticisms of the national spatial strategy, notwithstanding that it set up a hierarchy of settlements, was that too many locations were identified. We have to be mindful of the fact that this is a national planning framework. It will be partnered by regional subsidiary documents from the three regional assemblies - the eastern and midlands regional assembly area, the northern and western regional assembly area and the southern assembly area which broadly equate to a lot of Leinster, most of Munster and south Leinster, and Connacht and parts of Ulster. They will be required under legislation to prepare replacements for the regional planning guidelines. There are some things that we need to settle at a very high strategic level in the national planning framework which will set the scene for the regional documents to then come in and provide an effective framework for co-ordinating planning at local authority level.