Dr. Fred Logue:

Obviously, you need the resources and the local knowledge for all of that planning because it is actually a huge amount of planning. We still have county level administration. We got rid of town level administration for a limited number of towns and boroughs. Where I come from in Meath, it is all done in Navan. We need to make sure the local authorities are resourced, structured and governed in a way that they can deliver that throughout their functional areas. The expedited amendments are risky because if we get the public participation wrong in it, that invites challenges or undermines the legal certainty in the plan both for the public and for other stakeholders, developers, landowners or whatever. As I have said, we have seen a huge number of landowner challenges to development plans, even today, which does not get much air time in the press. That is where the most extreme amount of judicial review in the planning system is at the moment.