Mr. Gerard Brady:

Let me add one point to that. With regard to multi-annual funding, we have seen many projects that could have gone to the next stage quicker but that had to wait for a budgetary cycle to get what were small amounts of funding in the grand scheme of projects to proceed to route selection or the next stage in the process. That can add months to a project and, in some cases, a large number of months. I refer to giving the bodies delivering on the projects multi-annual budgets in order to be able to operate, even outside the budgetary cycle. From talking to European colleagues, I am aware that it is not necessarily a question of their not having access to the courts or planning system in the same way we do but of the time it takes to get a decision made through these. It goes back to prioritisation. A major critical national infrastructure project might end up in the same queue as the extension to a bungalow, for example, so it is a matter of trying to get these programmes prioritised in the system and also, as Mr. Sweeney said, parallel consenting. When applying for licensing and planning permission, one has to come after the other, but it should be possible to have both at the same time to get them through the system quicker.