Mr. Seán O'Leary:

With regard to Deputy Ó Broin's questions, the bullet point No. 1.6 refers to our own research involving a survey of members over the summer. The results of that are available on a blog on our website, www.ipi.ie. I can make the link available to the committee. That threw up land costs, financing and infrastructure as the key issues identified as delaying the obtaining of permission. That also refers to a survey of the profession we did last year, indicating the number of planners in planning authorities dropped by approximately a third over the course of the recession, which is a source of some of the pre-planning delays as well. The figures are from figure eight on page 35 of the board's annual report from 2015. The chairman's introduction states the board has seen an increase in 100-plus unit applications in 2016 but they have all been dealt with within the 18-week period. It does not specify the number of those for 2016 but it also takes in 30-plus unit applications in 2015, and there were approximately 60 of those. All of those are currently prioritised by the board anyway, as set out in the annual report.