Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I have a final comment on these amendments. The argument the Minister makes against amendment No. 150 and the level of restoration could just as easily be applied to conservation. The legislation does not set out to what level this applies or set out what is to be conserved. It just places an obligation, in this instance on the Minister, the Department and the Government, when producing a national planning framework to take conservation into account, and it lists some objectives. It is completely sensible to put “restoration” there as well. It is a matter for the NPF, as it is then being developed by the Government in consultation with the various bodies that it consults with, to work out what that looks like in terms of implementation and practicality, but if it is not mentioned there, it will not be in the NPF, and that is the real problem.

It is similar, for example, with the capacity to evaluate. We had this with the Minister of State, Deputy O'Donnell, the other day. We had an amendment and the Minister of State said that it might be very difficult to actually do that, given the resource limitations on the planning system and, of course, he is right. However, we could make that claim about almost all of the new innovations of the Bill. This Bill, in and of itself, puts very significant additional requirements, including some very good requirements and other very problematic requirements, on our planning authorities. I have acknowledged the fact there has been a limited number of the staffing sanction for local authorities that the Minister had announced, and it is only approximately 100 of the 500 that were said to be needed a year and a half ago, and not the additional number. In arguing that with respect to amendment No. 154, we need to be careful not to overburden the capacity of our planning authorities.

We are doing that with this Bill. The entire Bill is doing that in terms of its new innovations. Unless the Minister is able to tell us there is now a multi-annual workforce plan agreed with Departments of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform and Finance to step-by-step take us through all of the additional requirements that this Bill is going to place on the planning authorities, arguing against an amendment purely on the basis of the capacity challenges could be used against the Bill itself and, in fact, it may be an argument some of us use against sections of the Bill because there is not the capacity to deal with them.

I am not asking the Minister to repeat himself. I just need to hear the counterarguments to both of those amendments.