Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I support Deputy Catherine Murphy's proposal in respect of the Secretary General of the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. I get the Deputy Murphy eile's point about the review that is ongoing. Notwithstanding that, I recently took the opportunity to read back over the transcript of our last hearing with An Bord Pleanála and I recall, even as far back as my time as a councillor, that the issues that have arisen were flagged up as very likely scenarios. When you have a system whereby a group of people - in some cases very small groups of people - sit behind closed doors making decisions and are not accountable for those decisions unless somebody has the funds to take them to the High Court, there needs to be the maximum level of accountability and transparency. There is clearly a governance failure and a culture failure within the board that needs to be challenged. There is plenty for us to engage with, and the Department is an important component in that.

I suggest that we keep our work plan flexible enough that if we need to bring An Bord Pleanála back before the committee after the publication of the report, we can do so. As Deputy Catherine Murphy said, this is about tens of millions of euro spent on legal fees in fights against what was ostensibly the exact same position of the board, with the board losing every single time but continuing to go back. It appears that nobody within An Bord Pleanála said that this needed to be analysed and assessed and that nobody within the Department asked what was going on here. Yet representatives of An Bord Pleanála came into a meeting of the Committee of Public Accounts, where we deal with every Department and have limited time to go over documents, and several members were able to point out issues. The board dismissed the potential of an issue, and now we find out about all sorts of further reviews that will probably cost further millions in their outworkings. It will be one of the most important hearings of our term to date. I suggest we ensure that we create the capacity to have An Bord Pleanála before the committee a second time if necessary.

I have another suggestion for our future work plan if the Chair is dealing with them now.