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

I remind the Minister of State that I have the floor. He will have time to respond. He should restrain himself, please.

I return to my point. Something cannot be mandatory and a guideline. I absolutely understand that we have section 28 guidelines which have general guideline text. Within those there is the Orwellian mandatory requirement which is special planning policy requirement. I will just focus on amendment No. 222, which comes from the Irish Planning Institute's submission to us. In some senses the very fact that departmental officials and those in the Attorney General's office have gone to the bother of designing a much more complicated and, in the Minister of State's view, more robust national planning policy statement is an admission that the section 28 mandatory ministerial guidelines, particularly those that have proved to be most controversial, are legally weak. If they were not legally weak, the Minister of State would not be changing the process. As he said, over a period of time, Government will make a decision as to which of the SPPRs it will transpose into the national planning policy statement. As that happens there will be two sets of mandatory guidelines, one under the old section 28 system, which is legally less robust, and one under the new system. Is that not a recipe for problems? Some planning decisions will be taken under the existing legally less sound section 28 process and others through what the Government hopes will be the more robust national planning policy statement guideline process.

The purpose of the Bill is to achieve clarity, consistency and efficiency. The Government is actually creating two sets of mandatory ministerial guidelines, to use that phrase. That could create more confusion and leave planning authorities open to more legal challenge. Would it not be easier to do what the Irish Planning Institute recommends, which is effectively to remove the mandatory element of the existing section 28 process, until the Government decides whether to make the national planning policy statement. That will be a decision of Government as per the mechanism the Minister of State has set out.