Mr. Paul Hogan:

As part of the process of working with the local authorities and the working group I mentioned, if every local authority cannot provide a service through Irish, we think it is reasonable that there would be a shared service between them at the very least. Ideally, one would expect every local authority to be able to provide that service, but it is a reality that the planning service is under pressure across the board. There are relatively small numbers of people in individual counties and it is quite difficult to attract and retain staff of any kind, never mind those who are qualified in planning and engineering and other skills, as well as being sufficiently fluent in Irish. It is an issue we need to be practical about but at the same time we must meet the objective, which we believe we can do with this group.