Mr. Niall Cussen:

In a nutshell, we have a good team in the OPR that will examine the plans and all the different views that have fed into them because we get the chief executive's report and the story, so to speak, of how the plan has been prepared in a particular instance. Our job is always to compare the broad shape of a plan with the requirements of national and regional policies, the guidelines published by the Minister and so on. Ours is not a job to impose our view of planning. It is purely to read the plan across to what the national planning framework, the regional strategies and various ministerial guidelines have recommended or require local authorities to do in different instances.

In the example the Chairman mentioned, if a local authority, say, in finalising its development plan makes an amendment that clearly breaches a requirement of national policy or Ministers' guidelines that comes back to us for assessment in terms of whether the breach is serious or strategic enough that it would warrant making a recommendation to the Minister to issue a draft direction. That draft direction is subject to a focus process of public consultation. The outputs from that are also taken into account in a report of the chief executive back to the Minister as to how to give effect to the Minister's draft direction. It is then for the Minister to finalise the process. We have a good system and procedure, and expertise, internally to read the plans carefully. Anybody who looks at our submissions, all of which are available publicly on our website, will see that they are examined thoroughly and fairly and at a strategic level, not necessarily getting into a forensic level of detail but a proper strategic level of review.