Mr. Niall Cussen:

I am delighted that Deputy Devlin found our guides helpful. That is great feedback and I appreciate it. I will pass it on to the team. We hope to do a lot more on this, including videos. We will do further leaflets. Many ordinary people often find it somewhat difficult to understand or fathom the workings of the planning process. What we want to try to do in terms of our public awareness is to dispel some of those myths and put better information into the public's hands on how they can really influence the planning process.

The Deputy asked a number of questions. It is fair to say the strategic housing development process has put all the various strands, including An Bord Pleanála and the local authorities, under a lot of pressure, particularly in terms of resources. Perhaps it was an initiative to jump start the assembly of planning consents, which had almost completely withered away after the banking crash. As the Government has clearly signalled, it will run its course in the very near future. This may allow some reorganisation of resources. To this point, the Deputy mentioned the regional assemblies. Certainly they have more potential in delivering a shared service or a collective approach in co-ordinating the work of local authorities. There is some evidence of this already happening through the climate action regional offices, which, in effect, work across a number of local authorities. There is certainly a very strong case for more on this, as is referenced in my statement.

To clarify one point on the brownfield register, it is something for the Government to progress. I was merely making the point that it would be really helpful in measuring progress to achieve the existing brownfield development targets in the national planning framework. We are doing some research to support this if work on it is prioritised in the very near future.