Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

Prior to area plans, there are five years for urban plans or is that for the co-ordinated area plans? Before the amendment, it was just one year rather than five years. With the amendment, it will be five years. Was there a rationale for having those as only for one year initially. Why is this? Clearly that was a deliberate difference in the initial draft of the Bill. Why is this being rowed back on? I appreciate the issues around capacity and resources, but there would not be a lot of co-ordinated area plans.

There would be far fewer co-ordinated area plans, priority area plans and urban plans, so a decision must have been made previously for this to be given priority. It is my guess that this is because they are involved in two local authorities and we do not want one local authority to hold up the other local authority, etc.

Will the Minister of State explain why that decision was made? Priority was given to co-ordinated area plans but that decision has been rolled back. Related to that, the Minister of State said there is nothing to stop local authorities from doing this sooner. There is currently a problem whereby development plans specify that local area plans will be done, but they are often not done because of resource constraints at local authority level. The local authorities do not have enough planners and forward planning is not given sufficient priority or resources. I ask the Minister of State to expand on the reason he believes the timelines in the legislation will work given the deficits there have been in having local area plans provided?