Mr. John McCarthy:

We have asked our planning people, who have considerable experience of what happens in private housing, to look at this and that is their view. They have spoken to a lot of people in the industry as part of this. In terms of getting things moving in private housing, we have introduced a new single-stage planning process for housing developments of a particular scale. They go straight to An Bord Pleanála. This new arrangement kicked in in July 2017. All of the cases submitted as part of the process have been decided within the timescale, which is quite short.