Barry Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I ask Professor McQuinn, when answering that, to elaborate on the point he made about infrastructural bottlenecks. We were talking to the Central Bank earlier and I would have identified those bottlenecks as being specifically related to planning. There is a planning and development (amendment) Bill to be published in the coming weeks and to go through the Houses in the coming months. It will be incumbent on all parties and none to address that in a way that seeks to learn from the lessons of the recent past at the time of the housing crisis, when An Bord Pleanála had no statutory time period to make a decision, judicial reviews went all the way to the High Court, taking up to five years in some cases, and where they took three years, there were only two years of permission left before it lapsed. An Bord Pleanála made decisions on new plans that were pertinent to the permission granted some years ago for the same development. It is what I and many members see as the infrastructural bottleneck that needs to be addressed because we have been unable to deliver on our national development plans over the last number of years in the way which was envisaged, not because of the lack of funds being allocated but because of an inability to put that infrastructure in place in a timely fashion.