Mr. Eamonn Kelly:

No. Sadly, there have been a number of court cases on this. Pre-application consultation does not normally involve the public. It is to allow the developer to understand what information needs to be put forward into the public participation phase. There have been a number of challenges which have been successfully defended against, in the strategic infrastructure development, SID, process. There were challenges made to the SID process, in which there are pre-application consultations and the public is not involved. The reason for this is at many stages, the developer has not fully developed the scheme and wants to find out what he or she needs to do to allow the local authority, or in this case, the board, to feed back to say he or she needs to look at certain elements in putting together and finalising his or her pack, in order to publish it for the public.

The concept of pre-application is not for the public because the development has not necessarily been fully developed yet.