Ms Oonagh Buckley:

I thank the Deputy. Some part of my answer will cover Deputy Ó Broin's questions too. An Bord Pleanála set a target for itself in early 2020. I believe it reflected practice. The target was that it would meet its standard operating procedures between 65% and 75% of the time. Roughly speaking, when the board was properly resourced, it met its normal planning appeal timeframes 70% of the time. Bear in mind that that included the fact that, when it had to make a further information request, that time counted against An Bord Pleanála.

It was time that was actually with the developers, if I could put it that way, but it was because there was no stop-the-clock function. We are asking for a stop-the-clock function as part of this.

It seems that it was a fully resourced board, and based on the level of intake at the time, this was an appropriate timeline for normal planning appeals. I want to emphasise that this includes everything from householder applications up to pretty large housing developments and commercial developments.

We have engaged with the Department and we have said that broadly speaking - and putting aside the fines issue - that it is a reasonable enough timeline for normal planning appeals, bearing in mind that some will take longer. It is not, however, a reasonable timeline for anything involving larger developments, especially those requiring environmental impact assessments or a Natura impact assessment. It is also not a reasonable timeline for a strategic infrastructure development. By inference, it is probably not a reasonable timeline for the large housing developments. Members may be aware I worked in this area many years ago, and perhaps this is why I was asked to come back. One feature that surprised me when I returned was that instead of giving longer timelines to the larger developments, the approach has been to give shorter timelines. This is a policy decision, but in our discussions with the Department we are saying that logically more time must be given to bigger developments.

We are looking through our data as to how long those larger developments can take. We are about to make recommendations to the Department as to what we believe will come into that space. We are still working on those. I hope it will not cause great upset to people but I believe the general view should be, and I hope it is shared by the development community, that the timeline should be one that can be relied upon to give a well-reasoned and robust decision. There must be a trade-off between quality and time. As it stands, in some respects, that trade-off has skewed too much towards time. People were focused too much on achieving the timelines. That is my concern about the fines approach. If we end up with a fines approach, what gets measured gets managed and we end up with people being focused on avoiding the fines and not on delivering quality decisions. When we consider that the longest cases involved those major infrastructure projects that are so necessary for the country as a whole, we can see that a future commission could, quite correctly in my view, decide its best approach was to focus on normal planning appeals and those smaller planning cases because that is where the majority of cases are, and if it is to avoid a large fines bill, it would be better off focusing on the householder cases leaving the strategic infrastructure developments to one side. That would be wrong for the country. This is why we are trying to work on whether there is a more measured, calibrated and thoughtful way to approach the timelines in this space.

Perhaps the Chairman will allow me to come to the fine versus other options. I hear what the Deputy is saying. There is the possibility, for example, that the board could offer up some of its grant aid or appropriations in aid back to the Department but that just involves circular money within the public system. Fundamentally, it does nothing to assist the board. If the board needed investment in IT, or anything like that, this is what will be sacrificed in that space, because we must keep salaries and so on. This is something we have raised, and we have not settled on anything, but we will talk to the Department about it. Again, I emphasise that this is a policy decision and not one for the board. We believe there may be more subtle and thoughtful ways to address the issue of accountability for the leadership of the organisation in the future. These could include: fixed term contracts for the senior management team so they know that they must meet their obligations and what they have to do to keep the job into a second term; much more impactful governance from the Department; perhaps much more impactful governance from the Oireachtas, including from this committee; and the necessity to report and come into the Oireachtas to answer for failures to achieve targets, which could be part of what the Office of the Planning Regulator, OPR, has recommended as greater engagement between the board and this committee, and which I would welcome. We believe there are other ways that do not involve an element of windfall gain for appellants or developers, or indeed that circular flow of money within the system. As to what will ultimately be decided upon, the point we make to the Department is that ultimately the Department, the Minister and the Houses will have to decide what is the appropriate approach.