Ms Oonagh Buckley:

I have not fully worked this through, and certainly we have not made any proposals to the Department. What needs to be achieved is accountability for the management cadre of the organisation in order that it is focused on delivery within timelines. The question is what will achieve that accountability. I am not entirely clear that the organisation paying fines achieves this accountability. There may be other ways of holding people to account for efficiencies in the organisation and helping to drive it. Part of this is transparency, and needing to report to the Department, the Oireachtas, the committee could well form a very important part of this. It is about being publicly accountable in effect for the delivery of the timelines. This could make more of an impact in some respects, within the legal constraints. We cannot have a system of default permission, which used to be the old way in the planning system. In an era of environmental impact assessment it is not possible and it is certainly not possible for the board. The question is what will bring it home to the leadership of the planning commission that it needs to stick to those guidelines. This exists within the local authorities because they have been doing it for donkeys' years. The question is how we bring this culture and system into the board. I do not have it fully elaborated in my head but this is the way I am thinking about it. I am not sure the organisation paying fines or returning part of its grant would achieve it.