Emer Higgins (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

My apologies. I have just come from the Dáil; I thought it would be quicker to get to my office than across to the committee rooms. I thank the witnesses for attending.

I am particularly interested in what was said regarding the streamlining of planning enforcement, both from an enforcement notices perspective and also from a planning injunctions point of view. I hear repeatedly from my local authority that resourcing is a very big issue when it comes to planning enforcement. I am also told that the lengthy legal process is a very serious hurdle for councils to overcome.

To pick up on one thing in the opening statement, the witness referred to quarries. I love the idea of a specialist national team being charged with enforcement for quarries. When new laws came in a number of years ago on the basis of an EU directive to regulate quarries, all the quarries had to reapply for substitute consent in order to make sure they were adhering to current regulations. However, that was a very lengthy process. When one allows for appeals to An Bord Pleanála as well, it got even longer. While consent issues were tied up in boards and sometimes in courts as well when one considers further appeals, local authorities effectively ended up with their hands tied on all other enforcement issues with quarries. Operations could continue as normal while those cases were being heard in court. That is the experience of some of my constituents who live near quarries. I would be interested to learn more about how we could utilise the specialist skills set that is available when it comes to quarry enforcement to see if we could put together a team that would have a nationwide jurisdiction. I would like to hear a little more about that in particular.

There is also the streamlining of enforcement notices. Are there any resource implications for that?