Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail)

At the outset, I advise members of the constitutional requirement that they must be physically present within the confines of the Leinster House complex to participate in public meetings. We have received apologies from Deputy Conor Sheehan.

Members are also reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable or otherwise engage in speech that may be regarded as damaging to the good name of that person or entity. Therefore, if members' statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that members comply with any such direction.

The first item on the agenda is the minutes. Can we take it the minutes of the meetings of 9 July and 15 July, which have been circulated, are agreed? Agreed. I thank the members.

Our next item is our correspondence. Many members might have looked at the items before and gone through them or have them with them. The first item of correspondence is a submission from Abbie Brennan sent on behalf of Mr. Ian Talbot, the chief executive of Chambers Ireland. It reiterates concerns previously raised in the organisation's pre-election manifesto to all parties and none regarding the risk of the State overextending itself without the necessary infrastructure to support sustainable economic and population growth. We will note and publish it. Is that agreed? Agreed.

No. 39 is a submission from Mr. David Howard, the director of Property Industry Ireland within IBEC, advising the committee on accelerating infrastructure delivery. Several of the recommendations relate to planning and infrastructure matters impacting housing delivery. A supplementary submission is provided on the improvement of the judicial review process in planning matters, detailing solutions it believes would improve the process. IBEC will be happy to meet the committee again if we choose to discuss its solution. At this early stage, I would suggest that before the recess in December we would produce a report like we did at the end of the last session. I think we will discuss that letter in detail at that point. Some people will see the merit in limiting judicial reviews and legislation in that regard is being planned by the Department of justice. Some people here may have different views on it. We could debate this issue for the day, so let us just wait and see. We will come back to it before we do a report. As I said, we have a Minister coming in to us today. Everyone could say something about this topic, but we will hold it over and come back to it. We will note and publish this correspondence and keep it as part of our work programme to come back to. Is that agreed for now? Agreed.

No. 40 is an email from Mr. Aidan Sweeney of IBEC, providing additional information requested by the members at our previous meeting. The main item in that correspondence was the organisation's submission to the Government's review of the national development plan and the consultation on accelerating infrastructure. It is just a short email. We will note and publish it. Is that agreed? Agreed.

No. 42 is from Ms Áine Ryan, executive officer at the Planning Regulator. This correspondence provides additional information requested by the members at the previous engagement with the Office of the Planning Regulator. It is on a topic mentioned previously, which we will have to come back to, namely, this idea of the common good when it comes to planning guidelines. This is covered in the correspondence, and information is also provided on the county development plans, the current duration of each one of them, detailing when they commence and when they expire. None of them are due to expire this year or next year, but some are due to pass their sell-by-date in 2027. The schedule is included. I would think there might be some changes in the planning situation that might alter some of these development plans in due course, but not for now. That is just information that we asked for. Also provided was information on local authority planning department reviews and recommendation issues, the reviews done and the number of county development plans. It is all there. It is just for us to note because we asked for this information. We note and publish it. Is that agreed? Agreed. We will come back to this issue of the common good, because it is relevant to infrastructure, before we get into any reports on the matter at all. We will stack this up as part of our work, if that is agreed, and come back to it.

The next correspondence is No. 48, an email from Ms Breda Casey from the Courts Service. This correspondence was additional information requested by members at our meeting on 9 July. There is information in this. We asked about staffing levels, which is there. We asked about the average duration of planning and environment proceedings from issue of proceedings to the final order because they can take forever in the court. Good information has been given except there is a gap. It states it has examined the sample of cases concluded in June and July this year and gives examples of the average and median times taken. It said the final order was made approximately 11 months after - that was the average duration. The median duration was approximately 6.5 months. If I am right, the average is the number of cases and the median is the most common. It is different from the average. The email does not tell us how many cases are being talked about, so we need to get that. I do not know if it is talking about five, 50 or ten cases. We are not getting a proper feel of that. We will ask for that. We also asked about judicial reviews refused. There were 98 applications for judicial reviews. Five cases were refused and leave was granted for 93. We asked about the percentage of cases proceeding via expedited procedure through the Courts Service. The service told us that, in total, there were 49 cases on the planning and environmental list seeking a hearing. It gave a note in relation to how the list was established. It is a bit of a history tour back to 2020 and the different stages. Those things take time. There are mainly internal matters in the services about whether it takes a case by written submissions, issued raised in the court where there is a case made for an urgent case or expedited case or standard case. It is internal but it is useful information for us to have. We will seek information about how many cases the email referred to to have a better feel for that is being talked about. We will note and publish that.

The next correspondence, No. 49, was a response to an invitation from Mr. Karl Richardson of the Commission for Regulation of Utilities. He is scheduled to appear before the environment and climate change committee today. We will reset a date; he had already committed to that meeting.

The next correspondence is Senator Stephenson's suggestion that we focus on the process of procurement and tendering. She had a second - No. 51 - that we look at the needs of people with disabilities as part of our work in terms of infrastructure. We have to agree with that. When we come to do our report, we will take on board matters.