Mr. Tom Flynn:

I will make an observation on that. This is a point we made about real-life conditions and practicalities. There is a limit to how much we can compress the hearings. To give an example, let us say I am acting for a developer and there is a challenge to a wind farm. I get my papers from the applicant and I am told I have to file them within three weeks. The difficulty with that is I then have to go back to my client and get instruction. We have to be instructed. We may know nothing about the case. We will have to spend a day or two reading through everything. We have to then get instruction. We have to go back to the clients and ask them their views on the points that were raised. We then have to go and get the experts who might prepare the environmental impact assessment. There may be a noise expert for a noise point. That person may not be immediately available and may also be doing other things. They cannot just drop everything and say they will get back to us straight away. Typically, they will say they need to read the material for the next week or two weeks and then give their response. Therefore, a certain amount of time is needed in real-life conditions to deal with these things because they are very complex cases. There is a huge amount of factual matter that may include studies, reports, traffic analysis, noise analysis etc. The legal issues are very complex as well. They are not something to which people can just give a snap answer. There needs to be engagement with lawyers and the clients. This also applies to decision-makers such as the people in An Bord Pleanála who make the decisions and the inspectors. They are also trying to do other work. Again, we cannot expect them to drop everything and say they will deal with a case immediately. There is a limit to how much we can compress the system. That would be our observation.