Mr. Tom Flynn:

Yes, on an initial reading of it this does seem to be the approach being adopted in this regard. This is fair enough. I can understand it. At a broader level, I presume, there may have been an argument for looking at other models of enforcement. For example, if we look again at the analogous environmental area, there is an Office of Environmental Enforcement, OEE, under the Protection of the Environment Act 2003. This is a division of the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, and it has certain supervisory powers over the local authorities in the area of environmental law. Is this perhaps a model that could be looked at? Would it be better to have a national authority that would deal with this context and have analogous powers? Is there an argument for hiving this office out and setting up an entirely new one, which would be an office of planning and environmental enforcement at a national level and giving it supervisory powers to underpin the powers of environmental and planning enforcement? There are synergies between those two aspects. Those are issues that may need to be examined.

Turning to the Deputy's point about administrative provisions, it is well made. Again in the analogous area of environmental law, there is scope for administrative sanction. In the planning area, it could possibly be considered but there is a difficulty in this regard because, in general, the board which is responsible for issuing many of the development permits has no enforcement role. It is slightly different with the EPA because it has an enforcement role. It issues the permit and then there are enforcement powers under the relevant Act in this regard. It would be possible, therefore, to look at introducing some kind of administrative provisions. It is probably not a major lacuna in the system now, but it may be something worth looking at.