Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will pick up on Ms Buckley's point because there is something worse than a bad "No" and that is a bad "Yes". That leads to all sorts of problems. I have very rarely, if ever, heard a member of the public wanting this process to be fast-tracked. The only people who have ever talked about speeding the process up are some politicians and some lobbyists. What most people want, including members of this committee, is good decisions in a timely manner with meaningful participation. If our planning system does that - and the point about certainty is really important - then we are in a much better place.

I have another few quick things to ask Mr. Cussen and then Ms Buckley. If we do not get to those answers, Ms Buckley should feel free to drop a note to the committee; not that I want to give her more paperwork to do before she gets busy making those planning decisions.

Mr. Cussen mentioned in his opening submission that other areas of the Bill need more work. Will he rattle through some of those areas quickly? On the national policy statements, in some respects there are areas of our plans that are very clear. They are called strategic development zones, SDZs. I have been through one in Clonburris which is one of the best of the SDZs. Despite their clarity, they have not fallen foul to some of the problems this Bill is trying to identify. Again, I am not asking anybody to talk about the docklands but that is the case in point where notwithstanding that clarity, there were huge problems. The Department talked to us about transitional arrangements for when the policy statements are there and how that relates to all of the existing plans, including an SDZ, which can be a ten to 20-year plan in real terms. How do we make sure we get that right?

I am going to ask Mr. Cussen a political question and given his independence, I would really like him to exercise it. In terms of the policy statements, would it not be better to have Oireachtas approval? For the democratic legitimacy of those statements, given how significant they are going to be, and the fact that, through some of those procedures I mentioned earlier, there could be retrospective changes to various plans that have been democratically agreed, if we are going to retrospectively alter SDZs or development plans that require a democratic vote, surely the policy statement upon which that is based, should be democratically agreed. I ask him to consider that and comment if he can.

On the resources point, I welcome the fact that Ms Buckley brought it beyond the board. I think it would be much better if the board had in-house fire safety expertise instead of relying on external professionals. With no disrespect to them, it is a small country as Ms Buckley said and when those people are not working for the board, they are working elsewhere. As regards the figures mentioned, if there is more information that could be shared with the committee, not just in terms of what Ms Buckley has looked for so far but what may be looked for, that would really help us understand. The better the in-house expertise, the easier the decision-making is for the board members. We would appreciate any information on that. I did not get a chance to say it earlier but I fundamentally agree with the point that is being made by both organisations that there is a difference between fees for a consent - because you are asking somebody to give you something valuable - versus fees or any charges at all for public participation. That is an important point.

I fully support the accountability, particular in terms of the Oireachtas. It is interesting that an assistant secretary general of a Department is willingly offering to come in to be held to account to a Department. It is actually a probably far greater pressure on public officials to have to come in and explain in the public forum whether they have or have not met those targets, than a fine would be, which might get a bad headline one day but disappears after that. That is useful for us.

I want to pick up on that issue of the adequacy of the reasons and the complexity of the decisions. Ms Buckley was about to make a point the last time. Will she finish that?