Mr. Brendan McDonagh:

The role was all about unblocking land that is zoned but that might not yet have planning. The reason it does not have planning is that there are barriers to getting planning because people will not go in and spend money to get planning applications if there are infrastructure deficits. From my experience, and I did not need anybody else to tell me, the biggest infrastructure deficits out there are that there are sometimes problems with electricity connections and water and sewerage connections. What was envisaged here would be that you would look at the sites across each local authority that were zoned land. By working with the local authority, utilities and the potential landowner, you could identify the infrastructure blockages, work out and cost up the solution, and then make a recommendation. I would not have been making any decisions. I would have been making a recommendation that you can get 200 houses on this site if you fix the infrastructure. They can go in for planning and the site moves on. That is what the role was about. There is no other way to explain it. There are lots of zoned sites across the country, but they will never be built on because there are infrastructure deficits.