Mr. Niall Cussen:

That is great, I am delighted to hear that. Senator Boyhan asked earlier where we fit in the firmament and some of the Deputy's questions raise similar issues. Policy and the regulatory framework for planning is set by the Oireachtas and the Minister. Local authorities get on with delivering the planning services and preparing SDZ planning schemes, which can be submitted, ultimately, to An Bord Pleanála for approval. The board is handling the planning applications, appeals and so on and so forth. We stand back and look at the overall system and how all the different cogs relate to one another.

The Deputy asked about SDZs and the appointment of a local point of contact. We are not involved in the delivery of SDZs and it would not be appropriate for us to get involved in individual matters of planning applications, appeals, enforcement and whatnot. That is, in fact, set out in the legislation.

The Deputy also asked about SHDs and our sense of whether they have given rise to more judicial reviews. That is a simple statement of fact. As our annual report from last year showed, and our annual report from this year will show, the amount of judicial reviews has increased somewhat. They are a tiny fraction of the 30,000 planning applications that are decided by planning authorities every year, around the majority of which there are little or no judicial reviews. We are talking about a very small subset but, nonetheless, there have been significant increases from a low base. Much of that has related to SHD cases, for a variety of reasons. We have not looked at that in any close detail at this stage. It is important to remember that, under the programme for Government, the SHD process will come to a close early next year. I hope that good things have been learned from the SHD process. The planning process has been in a constant state of reform and evolution since it was introduced in October 1964. The planning process we have now is unrecognisable when compared with that in place a long time ago. It therefore follows that we will, I hope, have learnings to take from the SHD process to, if you like, apply in a reform context in terms of looking at the process now and how it might evolve into the future. The mandatory pre-application consultation and engagement with different stakeholders is a good, strong point. These are matters of which the Minister and the Department must take account. I gather the Department has a group working on some of those learnings.

The Deputy also raised a question about enforcement and resourcing. My colleague, Ombudsman and Information Commissioner, Mr. Peter Tyndall, has highlighted every year in his area of work that enforcement is a big area of complaint to the Ombudsman's office in the context of individual matters in which we are not allowed to be involved. We are looking at the overall system. We have a good day-to-day engagement with the Ombudsman's office in terms of the performance of local authorities in that area.

Going back to the response I gave to some of the earlier questions, we will be looking at and analysing more closely in the coming 12 months or so where the different local authorities are from a resource standpoint for the delivery of planning services. We will also do reviews. We have two authorities going through the review process right now. We ask a series of questions across 11 different broad headings, one of which relates to enforcement, how authorities are delivering and how that compares, etc. All of those reports will ultimately be published. The Deputy will see the output of that in due course if she gives us a little bit of time.