Mr. Niall Cussen:

We can come back with more specific information about Offaly, but I will respond to the questions the Deputy raised. All the submissions we make on development plans and so on, indeed everything we do, are available on our website. That is our mantra. Everything we do, we publish.

We provide a lot of information and support for community groups about how to access the planning system. There are explainer videos and leaflets to beat the band on our website and we are very keen to expand that side of the business. Many of the issues we have around infrastructure, planning and litigation go back in origin to the importance of ensuring the public understand the planning process and roles and some of the difficult challenges we have to try to address in the context of meeting housing, climate challenges and so forth.

We follow up with local authorities on how the implementation of the development plan is going. Ms O'Connor and the team engage constantly on that. We also carry out reviews of planning authorities and much of that is about the implementation of the development plan. We are currently in the review process in two local authorities. It is an NCT, if you like, of the broader systems and procedures used by planning authorities, but also of how the implementation of the development plan is going.

The Deputy mentioned outcomes and it tripped something for me. We have a whole piece of work going on around measuring what matters and moving towards a much more outcome-focused approach in measuring the efficacy of the planning system. Not only are we doing that but, in fairness to our colleagues in the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, they have established an innovation and efficiency part of the planning division, which has been spurred on by our work around the reviews looking at what success looks like in terms of the planning system. Everyone jumps immediately to how quickly a planning application is dealt with and that is an important yardstick, but there are other yardsticks, such as, when we have dealt with all the planning applications and the communities have been built, whether they are better quality, whether we have stronger communities as a result, whether environmental indicators are pointing in a better direction, with regard to, for example, the level of transport demand, our emissions and all that. We, our colleagues in the Department of housing and a wide range of other stakeholders are working on putting together an exigence framework and the Department of housing will be pushing forward on that front in the months ahead.

If the Deputy has any further questions on that area, I would be more than happy to engage with him on it.