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

Regarding the speed of the judicial review process, I cannot for the life of me understand, given the importance of housing and key infrastructure, why the Government simply does not appoint a sufficient number of High Court judges to speedily look at judicial reviews. Overall, as a society, the gain we would get for this would be well worth it rather than bringing forward changes that will potentially lead to long delays and satellite litigation. For the life of me, I cannot understand this.

I understand the Attorney General gives legal advice. That is the function of the Attorney General to the Government. I am not talking about this Bill in particular, but such advice is often presented as we got the advice from the Attorney General, therefore we are on the right path. However, the advice the Attorney General generally gives would normally contain options, choices and so forth, the same as any other legal advice. That is the way it happens. However, our question here is not about the legal advice. I understand the Government does not publish the legal advice from the Attorney General. I am asking what data and analysis was presumably given to the Attorney General to inform the advice the Attorney General then gave to the Minister and the Department. The Attorney General presumably did not just do all of this from scratch. Surely there was some empirical data and analysis that the Department or the Minister got done on this and gave to the Attorney General. It is that data, analysis and evidence that I am seeking. Is there data and analysis that was conducted by the Department or that the Minister had that then formed the basis of what was given to the Attorney General or informed the basis of these changes being brought forward to us?