Mr. Niall Cussen:

Deputy O'Callaghan raised an important point about online access to drawings. That point is in the same vein as another we just discussed. We will certainly examine that more closely on foot of this engagement. The facility to see drawings online through the SHD process and the websites established by the proposers of particular projects duplicates the paper file, which is always available. The Deputy is asking, in effect, if and how those particulars can be hosted in some shape or form on the local authority website, as would be the case with normal section 34 applications. The Deputy makes an interesting point, and I understand exactly what he is getting at. Representatives of local authorities will be before the committee soon, so the Deputy could raise the matter with them. However, I will be happy to look at it more closely and revert to the Deputy with the information we get.

As a rule of thumb, given that the normal section 34 application, the particulars approved and so on are available online, people should also be able to see what was submitted in SHD applications. If they have a sense that something is awry, they will then have an instant point of reference rather than beating their way to the council office, queuing at the counter and so on. In fairness, local authorities encourage people to use the online facilities. There has to be a solution to that. I have made a note of it and we will take a closer look. I thank the Deputy for raising the matter.

We hope that the quality of the integration of the plans will be enhanced because of our work. Before our establishment, no one was doing that work. Nominally, the Minister or Department would have had the oversight role but Ministers, in a normal sense, are reluctant to get into very close detail and have other more strategic issues to address. The benefit of our office having a multidisciplinary team with the time and focus to look at how the pieces of the jigsaw click together is that we can probably drive a much improved and much better integrated set of plans in the future than we have seen in the past.

The Deputy made an interesting point about urban villages. The local area plan guidelines and the forthcoming urban design guidance on which the Department is working cover this issue in one sense. The national planning framework includes many good policies around identity. It is the case that our major urban areas should not grow in such a way that a person travelling from one district to another will have no sense of place or identity. The Dublin city development plan, in its current iteration, promoted very strongly the urban village concept where particular nodes, centres or districts in different parts of the city would have an identifiable sense of being distinct from other parts of the city and would perform different functions. People want to have that sense of community and identity. It is very important to bring that out in the local plan-making process. The Deputy should watch that space, particularly around the urban design guidance coming forward from the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. Ultimately, it is a matter for the Minister and Government to set the policy. There are good foundations to that policy approach in several of the documents I mentioned and it will probably be strengthened further in the area I mentioned.