Mr. Niall Cussen:

On how we can assist in securing urban regeneration, proper planning and sustainable development, I will make several points. We statutorily assess the plans of the planning authorities and examine them rigorously. If they go far enough, we would be obviously supportive of them. If they do not, we point that out through our recommendations and the observations we submit. They have statutory effect. It is obviously an obligation on the planning authority to address those.

Public awareness is important in terms of what compact growth means and how we can achieve that in practice. We are very engaged around that. We have published toolkits for public engagement. We sponsor the "Eco Eye" series and there is a programme airing tonight on the very topic the Deputy has raised. I would recommend it as good viewing.

This is about raising public awareness about the urgency of this issue and its connectedness to other challenges that we face as a society, whether they are climate, economic, social, mobility and so on. We are also engaged in training programmes with elected members. To date, we have had seven events with an eighth one coming up this Friday. We have had hundreds of engagements with the 949 councillors the length and breadth of the country. They tune into our monthly webinars on these very matters. There is strong evidence of elected council members becoming much more aware around these issues and indeed understanding some of their cruxes and the trade-offs which have to be addressed in securing compact development.

To help get things moving, we will have reviews of local authorities. We are a statutory reviewer of local authorities, including An Bord Pleanála. We have a pilot programme with four local authorities being reviewed this year. We will be building up to a series of six per annum thereafter. We will be looking closely at local authority policies and programmes regarding active land management.

The Deputy raised a point about local area plans being adopted and particular opportunity sites identified. What has been the progress since the last plan adoption and moving matters forward? We will be asking straight questions on capacity and agility. In fairness to our local authorities, having much experience of working in them myself over recent years, they are extremely hard pressed. They need to be supported, resourced and funded appropriately to take on these functions. Some of the pointers around that are also included in our annual report.