Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Yes. I can outline the whole history behind the figure on another day.

In terms of the operational costs for An Bord Pleanála, additional staff have been allocated in order to cope with the additional workload and an extra 12 staff have been sanctioned. The work is ongoing so more people will be sanctioned if needed. Also, four new board members were appointed thus bringing the number back up to nine, which is where the ideal mechanism would be. We intend to appoint an additional two members to cover all of the various skills that we want to be part of the board.

In terms of ongoing improvements, Deputy Cowen asked about An Bord Pleanála reaching its targets. As members will know, an independent review of all of the operations conducted by An Bord Pleanála has been carried out and a list of recommendations has been produced that would increase efficiencies. Naturally, the recommendations mainly included calls to increase the number of staff. We are doing that because we went to be in a position, at least in 90% of the cases, to reach the agreed timelines. There has been a lot of slippage on some key projects that nobody could be happy with. We want to deal with the matter.

In terms of the Apple data centre, the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government has made it clear that we will try to get the matter included in the strategic infrastructure requirements. There will be a different process to deal with the matter.