Mr. Niall Cussen:

On the Deputy's first question on the north fringe and lands that straddle local authorities, he has raised a very good point. We are raising this with Dublin City Council and Fingal County Council in respect of the co-ordination of plans for the areas the Deputy knows very well and which abut each other. In some parts of Finglas, one does not know when one has crossed the border from the city council to the Fingal county area because it is part of a single community or area. It is important that the plans are similarly joined up. It is an area on which we were not especially strong before the Government strengthened the strategic framework for planning. We will examine this matter.

When we examined a recent variation of Dublin City Council's development plan for some of the areas north of Finglas village, this was a specific point we made and we are following it up with Fingal County Council and Dublin City Council in terms of how their respective development plans will co-ordinate on this issue. It is critical, in particular with the extension of the Luas network to Finglas which will be close to the area.

Going back to the regional spatial economic strategy which identifies areas that are strategically important along what will be the Maynooth DART line, which straddles the Dublin City Council and Fingal areas, it is important that there is a co-ordinated approach. That also needs to extend eastward towards the area where the Deputy correctly identified there have been issues in terms of development getting ahead of social and community, rather than physical, infrastructure. That can present issues.

We will examine this closely and engage with the relevant local authorities and encourage them to reach out to each other.

They do a lot of that themselves through various structural arrangements. We will also be examining how the quality unfolds in the written statements, including the maps that the local authorities publish as part of their development plans.