Mr. Gerard Brady:

On the infrastructure piece, we have a long paper that I am happy to share with the committee. I have appeared before the infrastructure committee on the challenges in delivering major infrastructure. Some of the challenges are being dealt with through the planning Bill, but it probably will not be enough to bring schemes forward. Our members raised a number of issues. One is where they are looking at decarbonising in a major way on-site where they are trying to bring technologies on-site. There is the EPA licensing regime where they are trying to transition to green technologies. It can often take so long that it makes it difficult to fight within a group. If a company is part of a large multinational, it is fighting in global level within a group to an investment and there are delays in getting licensing decisions. It is not about the "Yes" or "No" in the decision; it is about the length of time it takes to get those decisions. The EPA Bill will be important in that. Regarding the challenges in the planning process, particularly on judicial review, we understand the Government is looking at ways to improve that and speed that up, which is welcome.

The other part is the funding and capacity of the administration. We have good improvements in An Coimisiún Pleanála with extra resourcing. One of the major blockages we see now is the time it takes to get through courts. The new planning division of the High Court will be helpful, but we have to make sure that is resourced. The feedback we get from members is about the time it takes to make the decisions rather than the number of decisions in many cases. It takes two years to get there. To give an example I gave to the infrastructure committee, we had colleagues over from Sweden's IBEC. I will not try to pronounce the name of the organisation. They were coming to Ireland to learn. They were doing a tour of different countries they saw as economically successful. They asked about what the key issues in the planning system were. Mr. Minogue and I both met them. They were saying, "You must have a great planning system to get all this investment into the country." When we explained the system to them, they nearly fell off their chairs because they were coming to complain to us that it took maybe six months to get decisions in planning system. It is not that it is European-level legislation.

There are other countries in Europe doing this much quicker. It was recognised by the Draghi report that that was the case. Speeding up the decision-making process is key.