Mr. Eamonn Kelly:

On the first question, concerning the decision to move from a statutory instrument to primary legislation, it was a decision of the Attorney General with whom we were engaging throughout on a daily and weekly basis. Our focus was on drafting, and my understanding is that a legal decision was made as a matter of prudence, to reduce the potential for future judicial reviews. The original legislation was introduced by way of primary legislation, so my understanding is that was the thinking behind the decision.

On the question of how long the Derrybrien case will take, as it currently stands, there are no specific timelines for An Bord Pleanála and there are no statutory timelines. There are statutory objective periods in all cases for An Bord Pleanála, generally of 18 weeks. Our Minister is prohibited from getting involved in any case under section 30, but in terms of information, my understanding is that in the Derrybrien case the application was lodged by a company owned by ESB in August, and An Bord Pleanála had indicated it on its website that it was due to decide on the case in January, so that is a timeframe of around about six months. It is not for me to anticipate how long the board is going to take, but given that there would have to be a further public participation element to it, one might extrapolate from that, that it might be the middle of next year before a decision is made.

As I set out in the briefing note there are in and around 15 applications that have not yet been decided at the leave stage, and there are some 20 applications that are pending in the second, substantive stage. If this legislation goes through then the new legislation will apply to all of those, requiring a further round of public participation, and certainly for those who have already gone through their own public participation stage in the substantive stage, if that makes sense.