Mr. Niall Cussen:

There is certainly a lot of work there. To echo what Ms Buckley said, there will understandably be much focus on Part 9 in respect of the reform of judicial review. The Cathaoirleach should not underestimate the other provisions of the Bill, especially on plans, guidelines and so on and the criticality of getting a much better interlocking sense of national, regional and local documents. Due to the underinvestment in the planning process, the lack of clarity and cohesion, in a broad sense, of the plans, guidelines and so on at different levels, it is very often the board, and indeed the planning authorities, that end up in this balancing process. They end up trying to figure out what is the way through this, between what the Government has said in the national planning framework, what Ministers have said with specific planning policy requirements, other section 28 guidelines and the development plans and local area plans.

Of course, we are now overseeing those plans and trying to achieve that greater coherence, although with not very effective legislation in the current construction, which the Bill is addressing to a significant degree. Accordingly, it is important not to underestimate that front end of the process for creating a clearer context and a clear path through which planning authorities can navigate in making their decisions, and so the public can get a better sense of what is envisaged in their areas. That goes back to the resourcing piece and also back to the training piece.

We are still at the early stages as we are only three and a bit years in existence. We have focused a lot on the elected members, initially because we had the local elections in 2019, and we never had a national training programme in planning for the 949 elected members in the country. We have done that, we have delivered that and it is ongoing, with more programmes this year. The next piece of that is to do with the training programme for staff. Again, the key message there is we must have the space in their diaries to do the training and so on. I do not want to labour the point covered earlier.

We are navigating much more complex legislation, including EU law, reasoned conclusions and Natura impact this, that and the other. A clear message we undertook as part of the learning and development strategy was staff have not had sufficient time and exposure. That may be there to a degree in An Bord Pleanála but I do not know. We did not do a survey on the board because of course, under the current legislation, the board is not within our training remit, whereas it will be under the provisions of this Bill.

The Cathaoirleach should not underestimate the importance of the plans piece and the resourcing and training elements as well. My sense of it would be that if we look across those judicial reviews, whatever about doing huge lengthy analysis, we will find a mix of factors. I have read the annexe and am familiar with some of the cases from tracking them. I have a sense there is probably a modicum of basis errors, which the Bill will help a lot with. There is certainly a healthy chunk of areas of procedural tightness, timelines and giving of reasons and so on that will help. As I said, there is a big chunk in there around understanding what we are at in the first place.