Neasa Hourigan (Dublin Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I agree with what Deputy Murphy has just said and I wish to continue on that point. We wrote to An Bord Pleanála and asked for a great deal of information. We were looking for some insight on why the level of increase in legal fees had happened and on the decisions around those costs. Reading that document has not greatly illuminated a significant amount for me. By far the largest proportion of cases, 14 of them, relate to the ignoring or overturning of development plans, which are statutory documents. I would be very interested to know if the costs that have been awarded against An Bord Pleanála relate to that larger group where development plans or legal issues concerning material contraventions of such plans are being ignored. That would be useful to understand what is going wrong here.

I echo the comment by Deputies Murphy and Munster that we have not got to the bottom of this yet and we are going to see an escalation in judicial reviews because communities understand that they are successful and that, in effect, this situation is delaying the quality development of sites because they are getting tangled up in legal issues. We should write back for further information on how those eight cases where costs were awarded against An Bord Pleanála relate to those first two categories where there was a material contravention of a development plan or a legal interpretation of the zoning provisions of development plans. We are at a stage in this country where people are looking at the new set of development plans and it is very important that we understand what is going on there.