Mr. Jack O'Sullivan:

I would not really see the responsibility being taken away from local authorities. I believe the closer decisions are made to where they are going to be enforced or where they affect people the better. Even with the current Office of the Planning Regulator and with Irish Water, for example, local authorities have lost much of their power compared with the powers that similar local authorities have in other EU member states. The Department should look carefully at the legislation. When that section of the planning Act which allowed a retrospective application to be made was shut down, it resulted in a gap in the legislation.

What is the appropriate way of dealing with a development like the one in question today which has taken place without planning permission? It cannot obtain retrospective permission because that legislation has gone. To leave it there sends a bad message to people. To remove it would do ecological damage. It has already damaged part of the shoreline. This is something that legislators need to look at. It would be no harm to query the Department on the adequacy of the legislation. Why did we pass legislation in the first place which was later shut down by the High Court? Did we not think through that legislation properly before we did so? These are questions the committee members might put to departmental officials.