Mr. Gavin Lawlor:

I will take the first question on timelines. We have extreme concerns about the time that is being dedicated, particularly to the development plan provisions. We have a senior planners forum, which is made up of all the senior planners from the relevant planning authorities and they have made a submission to the institute raising significant concerns specifically about the timelines. We have the same timeline that is in the 2000 Act in the new Bill for the production of a development plan, yet quite an extensive amount of additional work is required to prepare a development plan now than had been the case 20 years ago, for example, regarding flood risk assessment, appropriate assessment, strategic environmental assessment and the list goes on. Two years is, therefore, insufficient. Irrespective of resources, it is just not enough time to get through the steps that are needed to get through properly, as well as to engage properly with the issues and the detail of a development plan.

More specifically, there are provisions being made relating to the ten-day period to deal with redactions in public submissions. Most public submissions are made at the end of a public consultation process. Then, there are only ten days to go through them, but in most planning authorities the numbers of submissions are in the hundreds. There may be more than 500 submissions. Going through each submission and redacting it-----