Francis Noel Duffy (Dublin South West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their briefing and collective wisdom, which is always much appreciated. I fully welcome the review in order to make planning procurement more efficient for our society. However, a key issue I have found in the review is a lack of transparency around the Attorney General's working group to date. We have submitted parliamentary questions seeking information on membership and terms of reference. The response from the Department indicated that it did not seem to know the membership of the expert group.

I have a couple of questions, some of which may have been asked already but I am not aware of that. However, I welcome the direction and responses of the witnesses. Can the witnesses performance as to why the review is being led by the Office of the Attorney General as opposed to the Department? Can they inform members of the membership and terms of reference of the Attorney General's expert group? This review, as we all know, could bring about significant changes to our planning system. However, we still do not know who is on the steering group despite attempts to get this information through parliamentary questions. I believe the process should be open and transparent, as it is an advisory forum.

As was mentioned earlier, it would be useful for the committee to assist in a review if the advisory forum was invited for engagement on the progress of its work.