Ms Oonagh Buckley:

I thank the Deputy who asked a number of questions there. First, on the timelines, we are currently working up a written proposal to put to the Department and I would be very happy to share that with the committee once that has gone over to the Department.

In general terms, I have said that we believe that 18 weeks should be a standard, plus a further information timeline, which should be longer but not excessive, whether that is in an environmental impact assessment, EIA, or a Natura statement. There should then be a quite a long period of time for infrastructure developments because those, by their very nature, can take months to read, not to mind to write a report on, at which time then the board has to make a proper decision.

I will not in any way suggest that we will be looking for this much time but we have noted that in the United Kingdom, for example, it can be as long as 75 weeks as a timeline. I am not saying that Ireland will go down that route but we will certainly need to have enough time to take decent decisions. Bear in mind also that for those one-stop-shop-type applications, there is not a period of going through the local authorities. The board is the only decision consent authority, so that has to be taken on board also.

I will come back to the Deputy with information in respect of how long decisions are currently taking within the board, bearing in mind, as the OPR has pointed out, that we have a year-long backlog.