Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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You could write a philosophy PhD dissertation on the meaning of good reason or, indeed, on special circumstances. Does the Minister of State not think that there should be some way of providing a framework or guide to the board in making those decisions. It seems to be too broad. The Minister of State and I can have a nice conversation here about what we interpret it as being. He is confirming that nowhere in legislation or regulations will there be a definition or an attempt to provide at least the outer limits of what that definition may be. That then gives the board a pretty wide berth of what may or may not be applicable. For example, and we all know this from experience of freedom of information, commercial sensitivity could be a special circumstance, but should commercial sensitivity trump public transparency about a decision about a construction industry? In many cases these could be large companies. There could be all sorts of questions around potential defects or defective practices, non-compliance with the register, etc. I am not saying that I do not accept that there may be special circumstances but I would like a clear idea of what they are and for the board to have some limits on how they determine those.