Mr. Peter Walsh:

If the Cabinet has decided that a particular project or initiative is a priority for the Government, it would be helpful if the agencies of the State were given the ability not to mind their own bailiwicks to the detriment of that project. I do not think anybody is up to mischief. They are just left with the responsibility around their own element of infrastructure or whatever and are obliged to defend, seek to minimise or to raise concerns about what might be a negative impact on it. Whereas we have brought an awful lot of projects through planning, and we know the process is not the place to do that. The difficulty is that there is no mandate to start thinking about the common goal and concede something. We have conceded in terms of accommodating cables under national roads because, as an executive, we went to some efforts to persuade our board that even though our requirement is to preserve the road to the best of our ability, we can see that the national grid needs to be upgraded and that we are just going to have to work with ESB Networks and EirGrid to ensure we get the least worst outcome of a process that is going to be disruptive. For some reason, we seem to think cables should not be put overhead on pylons anymore. That is another day's work. If they have to be accommodated, then we-----