Ms Attracta U? Bhroin:

In response to Deputy Gould's question as to whether we will be back here again, it feels to me as if we are already in a Groundhog Day situation. Effectively, the situation we were in previously was such that Ministers made the decisions on planning etc. Then we decided that was not good enough and that we needed to move to an independent board. We did that in 1976. The Minister had too much discretion within that, and in 1983 we moved to the panel system. Now where are we going back to? We are going back to a situation in which the Minister has total discretion. If the Deputy follows me, again he has hit the nail on the head. Will we be back here again? We are going back in time with this legislation.

Mr. Lawlor's points about the interaction between the board and the inspector are interesting. The inspectors have a huge amount of expertise and experience, but there is that requirement, especially in the context of what we now have, that is, the notion of the competent authority, whereby the ultimate decision is made by the board and it has the ultimate duty of the assessment. That is where it is critical. There is case law that could fill this room on the issues around the adequacy of reasons and considerations. That is something we could really improve in respect of our Planning and Development Act and all the environmental legislation where there are EU law requirements around assessment and particular requirements in respect of the transparency, the quality and the production of an assessment, and people's ability to look at a decision and understand why it was made or why it was changed. There is now already a reference before the European Court of Justice in the Eco Advocacy case. The hearing was just a week or two ago and related to the format of the reasons and considerations and precisely where the assessment could be found as to whether an environmental impact assessment, EIA, was required and how well it was set out. The problem is our legislation does not really do that. That is why we end up with challenges, issues, delays and things going to preliminary references. There are many complementary things that could happen around all this to address the types of issues the Deputy has raised.