Mr. James Benson:

Again, we need to try to mitigate against the extensive resources and time that are required for something that will never come to fruition. Unfortunately, we are seeing a large number of uncommenced planning permissions. There are around 80,000 at the moment. There has to be a reason why they are uncommenced. I am sure it is due to a combination of factors, including viability, infrastructure deficits, trying to get fire certificates or meet compliance obligations, and getting responses back. There are a number of such uncommenced permissions. The economic viability assessment is just one of the potential measures that could be included to try to mitigate against that waste of time and resources. It will not, by any means, be the ultimate reason for the granting or rejection of planning applications, but it will help to further educate those within the system. One of the benefits that we did see within the strategic housing development applications was section 247 meetings, where a greater number of parties were coming into the conversation earlier. I think we need to have a greater number of parties involved, including the planning authority, the applicant and prescribed bodies, such as Irish Water, energy providers, Transport Infrastructure Ireland, parks organisations, local authorities and others. The more people we can have involved in the earlier conversations, the more likely we are to deliver and bring forward developments that are required for the locality and are more affordable.