Mr. Conor McCabe:

To be honest, I have never heard of pre-legislative scrutiny of a plan. It is generally done on legislation and it would have occurred on the Act we are working from, the Planning and Development (Amendment) Act 2018. I understand that the previous committee carried out pre-legislative scrutiny of that legislation and considered it as it went through the Houses as part of Committee Stage. I have never heard of pre-legislative scrutiny of a plan, and while I may stand corrected on that, even its name suggests it is done to legislation. This framework is not legislation, however, but rather a plan that has been legislated for through that Act.

As for the timeline that will affect, there are two aspects. We will miss our deadline but we missed our deadline of 31 March last week. Nevertheless, we are locked - I use that word in the best possible way - into a parliamentary process that is right and appropriate and that, as officials of the State, we are here to support. I do not think the Commission will have any issue with us missing our deadline because each member state has its own parliamentary process that it has to go through. We do not want to be seen to be circumventing anything. Having said that, the pre-legislative scrutiny, waiting for reports from the committee and so on will no doubt delay, unnecessarily in my view, the publication and finalisation of the framework. In any event, I am a servant of the State and will react accordingly to the wishes of the committee and the Oireachtas.