Mr. David Walsh:

I thank the Deputy and appreciate his comments. I note his first few comments and probably will not give a view on those. I do not have a breakdown on the number of cases and where they are and how many are 12 plus months or whatever. When I went into the board I was clear that I wanted to look at the oldest cases and ensure they were put at the top of the pile and addressed. I can understand the frustration of someone whose application has been waiting for 12 months when someone else's is completed in four and half months or three and a half months. The vast majority of the cases we dealt with in the last few months of the year - the 600-odd cases - are cases that were already over the 18 weeks. Therefore making the decision to focus on cases that are well beyond the four and a half months did not improve - in fact it disimproved - our percentage.

Ms Kenny and the planning team have confirmed that we are at a point where cases where the decision dates that were due in the latter half of the year we are now actually up to where the four and a half month period in most cases is probably November or December. We are now getting it back to where there are still two or three months of cases that still need to be resolved. Obviously some of the larger cases will require significant further information, ecological reports, full-year studies etc. Some will obviously skew this and be almost historical cases.

There are some other cases where we have actually opened cases through pre-application discussions and the legislation as it stands does not allow the board to close it; it requires the applicant to actually close. We probably have 50 or 60 cases on our books that will never happen but still exist.

We will engage with the Department to see whether legislation can be amended or improved to correct this anomaly whereby cases are left sitting. We are happy to provide further information. We are within the last two or three months of dealing with the bulk of cases.

This partly answers the Deputy's second question as to whether we are being too ambitious in how we will deliver this. The statutory objective is to deal with cases within 18 weeks and, at present, the average is 22 or 22.5 weeks. Some cases are dealt with faster and others are not.If we take it that, on average, we are getting approximately 250 cases a month, over the next three or four months we will work through the remaining backlog and deal with cases in which there is enough information for us to go to the board. The fact we have ten board members as opposed to the four we had back in May or June 2017 means we can have a number of board meetings at the same time. The minimum quorum for normal board meetings is three so with ten people we can have three board meetings concurrently. The larger strategic housing development schemes require more people.

As Ms Lambkin said, when we introduced the new system staff were not able to deal with applications for a month while we took our time. We began with live cases. We stated that from a particular date we would put them on the system. This involved our entire team, from people in reception to those processing cases, to ensure the system worked. There was a certain and necessary slowdown that always happens in a transition. If we lose one or two months' work, we will suddenly find ourselves 500 or 600 cases behind and chasing them. We must then decide whether to go with the old cases.

If, as I outlined, we can put in the resources and be innovative in tackling this, for example, by initiating extra work and overtime and incentivising planners to take extra cases and deal with them out of normal office hours, we will clear some of the backlog. We need to continue to do this and get support from the Department, not only for the resources we need but also because we expect to see more cases, including more complex cases, coming through. If there is a case where an inspector or a team is no longer tied up for three months but for six or nine months dealing with a huge file, it means we do not have an inspector to deal with other cases that might come through. It is not solely about throwing bodies at this. It is about making sure we have people in the right locations. We are hiring an ecologist and we will bring in business analysts and programme managers to ensure we keep Plean-IT on track. I feel very reassured given how the board operates and how professional the team is. Over 12 months, we will probably have dealt with between 60% and 70% of cases because of having to deal with legacy issues in the first half of the year. For the last quarter, however, I expect to deal with more than 80% of cases and to maintain this rate as we go forward to ensure the organisation will not face the same challenges in future. It is something we are ready to do. The workforce plan will further support and identify any deficits we need on the resources side.

With regard to mapping, we will build in a geographic information system, GIS. The wider myplan.ie, which is led by the Department and includes local authorities, is very much more from a zoning perspective and seeing designations. As Ms Lambkin said, we have been building a system. The GIS element is the second phase of our Plean-IT project. When the website goes live we will have a GIS and it will be interactive. Going back to the issue raised by Deputy Casey, the key is to have a joined up system. We cannot have the board doing one thing and local authorities doing something else. There must be synergy and sharing.

With regard to the intensity of the work, if we were to try to deliver cases more quickly, it would come down to resources and ensuring we have timely feedback from statutory bodies and local authorities. Even as it is, strategic housing developments have worked. We have put a huge amount of focus and resources on them but they are hugely work-intensive.