Mr. Terry Sheridan:

There was a comment that judicial review does not satisfy the Aarhus Convention requirements but I disagree. It is a specific matter on which we took legal advice from the Office of the Attorney General when these arrangements were being devised. Once there is an appeal mechanism, whether it is an appeal to An Bord Pleanála or a subsequent alternative appeal to a court of law, it satisfies the Aarhus requirements. I wanted to correct the Deputy in that regard.

There is the suggestion of the SHD arrangements being progressed on foot of lobbying by developers but that is not a fair comment either. Various stakeholders were involved in trying to address the housing supply shortage in 2015 and 2016, including developer lobby groups. There were also local authorities and numerous other stakeholders in the process.

The arrangements were not new or innovative. They were based on the outline given by Mr. Hyde, amounting to pre-existing arrangements that have applied since 2007 for strategic infrastructure developments. They provide for direct application to the board. That is from where we modelled it. It is not necessarily the case that this was totally down to developer lobbying. I just wanted to correct that because it is something we looked at in any event.