Mr. John McCarthy:

We generally allow eight weeks for consultation. That will take us to Christmas so that is why I mentioned early 2019 to finalise them. We will need a few weeks at the end of the consultation period. In the previous round of public consultation on the first revisions to the guidelines we received 7,500 submissions, if memory serves. We will conclude it as quickly as we can after the consultation process is finished but we have to work our way through whatever we get in that.

It has not been a blank canvas without those guidelines. The 2006 guidelines still remain in force. I am not disagreeing with the Deputy in terms of his views on certain projects that have received planning permission or are in place, but I am also aware of many wind projects that have been refused planning permission either at local authority level or at An Bord Pleanála.

We are at the final stage. Once we get through this public consultation on the revisions, we will get them finalised as quickly as possible. However, we will have to take account of the submissions which come into us because that is a critical part of the SEA process.

We are developing standard layouts for local authority housing. If a project is taking four years, such as that to which Deputy referred, not only are the local authority or the Deputy frustrated, the Department is too. There have been projects which have been around for three to four years. The reason they did not progress previously was because, in 2013 and 2014, the funding just was not available for them. If there is a particular project which the Deputy has in mind, I would not mind getting the details of it because it frustrates me. We can discuss it afterwards.

We have introduced a one-stage process for the smaller projects of up to €2 million. There are approximately 200 projects which could proceed through a one-stage process. From memory, local authorities have availed of the process for 12 projects. We want to put streamlined arrangements in place and ensure they work.