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

I thank the Minister for his response. When I drafted these amendments, I considered those issues around accessibility. Another way to tackle the issue could be that the provision could apply to applications for more than one unit. What sort of developer will put in an application for ten or 100 homes and not be able to do the application in this manner? I accept there will be some cases where applicants seeking planning permission for an extension or possibly one home might do the drawings manually themselves. I think this amendment would work for anything larger than that, such as multiple units. Will the Minister consider this in terms of planning applications for multiple units?

Certainly not all public participation but a lot of it is around larger applications for multiple units, and the illegibility of documents that are uploaded is a key issue. That often happens in larger developments with large drawings and maps being quite difficult for people. They get a poor quality PDF and are zooming in on them but are unable to read the writing and so forth. Will Minister address what is being done to tackle the legibility of poor quality PDFs that are being uploaded?

He might also let us know about e-planning, which is coming in this year. If the documents are uploaded electronically, what is the process for making paper files available for people at their planning authority counters?