Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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I will make a general point first of all, mainly in response to what Deputy Seán Kenny said about the ethics area. The Mahon tribunal made 64 recommendations and only ten of them relate to planning. Much of the corruption-related issues are being dealt with in other ways and do not relate to my responsibilities on planning. Today, we are specifically focusing on the forward planning area, but many other actions are being taken as a result of the Mahon report that will restore confidence in the political system.

Senator Keane spoke about the importance of transparency and ensuring the public know what decisions are made and why. She also referred to ensuring that where there were material contraventions the information was publicly known.

Deputy Corcoran Kennedy referred to that as well. There is a specific recommendation in the Mahon report, planning recommendation No. 6, which specifically addresses that area. We intend to address it by way of legislation so that there would be publication specifically in the case of anything to do with material contravention. Also, the requirement to provide a rationale for departure from the manager's recommendation will be in primary legislation. It is recommended that all proposed grants of permission in material contravention would automatically go to An Bord Pleanála for final determination. That would involve a public notice process and it would have to be provided for in legislation. It is a separate recommendation to the one about the regulator, but it is also one on which the Government intends to act. That addresses one of Deputy Corcoran Kennedy's questions as well.

The other question that Senator Keane raised was on the planning enforcement directive. She suggested that the councillors, as well as the management, should be made aware of the report. We can certainly ensure that the report concerned would go to councillors. I will certainly take that on board.

Deputy Seán Kenny, from personal experience, would have been aware of much of the background to the issues in the Mahon tribunal report. I have referred to the fact that the anti-corruption and other measures are being dealt with by other Ministers in other ways.

On enforcement, it is interesting to note from statistics available to me that in the boom times, 80% of planning time in local authorities went into managing applications, only 15% went into forward planning and 5% went into enforcement. We want to change that. We want to ensure that enforcement and forward planning get their proper place. If that had been the case in the past, perhaps there would not have been so many of the decisions that were made. We must learn from that. I am particularly keen to get enforcement its proper place in the hierarchy of priorities for planning authorities, and that is why we are doing this.

Planning recommendation No. 9 - I apologise for mixing up the different recommendations - is the one on political donations which Deputy Corcoran Kennedy raised. There is a recommendation that information on relevant political donations should be made public. We intend to implement that recommendation. We merely must work out how to do it. The figure that was given was any donation in excess of €55. I am loathe to give examples but it is a matter of figuring out, if one played in a golf classic that was being organised to fund a political party, for example, whether would one need to declare that in applying for planning permission. We merely need to figure out how exactly we would do this but, in principle, I would be fully supportive of the recommendation that political donations, where they exist, are known and declared in the planning process. That is also a specific recommendation of the Mahon report. I hope I answered the specific questions on both enforcement and the Mahon report.