Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We will provide them to the committee. I have no doubt that Deputy Ó Broin is aware of them, but I have no issue with providing them.

Section 19(3)(a) refers to "identification of nationally strategic development requirements as respects cities, towns and rural areas in relation to employment, future population change, and associated housing, commercial and public infrastructure development requirements".

The national planning framework is a document that looks forward. It is not as if we are bringing the ESRI in and it has not done a previous body of work. It has. This is basically an update of previous work it has done which looked at the previous population. It is looking at the demographic change as we had a census recently and structural housing demand. It is about ensuring that housing forms a key component of the national planning framework and that it has to be based around population, population shifts and changes in the make-up of households.

The ESRI is looking at it, but it has already produced projections which it is now updating. We believe that when we are looking forward, as we are doing in seeking to get to a point where we produce an updated version of the national planning framework rather than a new national planning framework, the empirical data underpinning it in terms of population must be fully up to date in advance of the final work being carried out by the ESRI. That is why we have deferred the conclusion of the updated national planning framework, not by a long period of time but by a number of months.

We will provide Deputy Ó Broin with the terms of reference. If he looks at what we are discussing here, he will see that it is covered under the legislation. It is about looking at what the future demands are. Obviously, when the ESRI is looking at that, it will factor in the current situation as well.