Mr. Peter Mullan:

I should have clarified that. We met a number of your colleagues this morning.

One of the statistics is for the 30-plus houses category. In 2024, there was a large backlog of 30-plus housing. As part of stakeholder engagement, we engaged with a number of different stakeholders and they indicated to us that housing is an issue. The development of projects that are not the larger projects - those medium-size projects - would particularly suit certain types of smaller and medium-size builders. We chose to prioritise those. In 2024, 64 of those cases were dealt with, 29 were granted and 22 refused. At the moment, there are 13 cases in the office that are in our backlog. We have prioritised those and almost completely cleared that caseload. At present, there are 35 cases for 2025 in that category. All of those are within our statutory objective period, SOP, and are compliant. We are going to meet our guidelines in that regard.

What I am saying to the Deputy is that his constituent was unfortunate. Their application arrived in 2023, I suspect, when the organisation had its largest backlog. We have prioritised those 2024 cases in the last six to nine months, we have worked relentlessly to clear those out. We have 13 left, eight of which are at board level, and I expect they will be gone in the next three to four weeks, and the rest are imminent. The 35 are in date within the building. If one of them is a new constituent making an application, they will not be getting those letters because they will be dealt with within the period that we have specified.