John Paul Phelan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy was not involved, but lots of my own were. It is a well flagged and genuine attempt to do something new to deal with the intractable boundaries problem.

Let me give the final explanation as to how we arrived at this measure. Essentially, what we are asking is that the smaller local authority give up its power to produce a local area plan. In the case of Drogheda which was mentioned by Deputy O'Dowd, it will mean that Meath County Council will select three members, with Louth County Council. They will adopt the local area plan for the urban area, most of which is within the boundaries of County Louth. On the county development plan, they will not do what they did in Drogheda and resile from the joint agreement. We can avoid the scenarios that were discussed. It was Deputy Ó Broin or someone else who raised the question of what had emerged in Cork during the years, where the county council was zoning land for housing development on the boundary between the city and the county which resulted in the creation of new settlements. I am open to changing the amendments in whatever way we can to accommodate the concerns of members of the committee. We will have multiple meetings in the two weeks in the lead-up to Report Stage.

I will deal with a number of other specific issues. To respond to Deputy Ó Cuív comments, I am not particularly wedded to the idea of having outside people. I emphasise for the Deputy and everybody else present that the role of the groups is to perform functions that are not performed adequately or not at all by councils. There was no question of having council planners or planning staff included as the experts. We were looking at the forward planning aspect. I will have no difficulty in accepting amendments on Report Stage. I completely accept the Deputy's idea on RAPID programme areas and about the community and voluntary sector in general.

I believe I have answered most of the questions that were asked.