Mr. D?nal McCormack:

We start by stopping mentioning the 1926 and 1934 Acts. I had a look last night and saw there are references by Kildare County Council and Dublin City Council. It is everywhere. There does not seem to have been any communication as to why the previous laws have been repealed. The fact that they are still being referred to implies strongly in my view that there needs to be a community growing law to replace that. I suppose that is where I am coming from at the start. Mentioning that in all manner of policies and things should not be happening, particularly when it was 1994. It was not like it happened last year.

Regarding other parts of legislation, I think we covered most of it in terms of having a waiting list and a clear requirement for local authorities to provide some measure of a timeline. We recommended five years. Again, that is what Scotland has in its legislation so we are copying what it has.

We were discussing that there is a potential to amend the Local Government Act 2001 rather than having bespoke legislation on this. Allotments are detailed in the 2001 Act. That could, therefore, be something for the committee to look at as well rather than having its own legislation. I think that pretty much covers it. The whole point really is to make it easier for communities at the end of the day. That is all we want. We should not have to wait. Some communities have been waiting ten years for lands, which is an obscene amount of time. South Dublin County Council last year defined its waiting list as being ten years for someone who is on it.