Ms Maria Graham:

One of the issues behind this is to have clarity. As Deputy Ó Broin said, there are a lot of applications. Some 30,000 applications go through the system every year and only 10% of them are appealed, with only 8% ending up in judicial review. That is why a basic tenet of this is no unnecessary change. Part of our approach is that while there are things that might look a bit complex, people understand them, so we need to be careful about pulling things apart. That transparency piece is very important.

When we come to the consents piece, it is almost that we can see a flow through the legislation. It should start with the plan-making piece and it is then into consents and it should be clear where the different consents are. With regard to the current planning Act, a drafter said to me that when we start to go into letters of the second run of the alphabet, we know the legislation has become difficult. That is the idea. People should be able to pick up the Act and understand it or it should signpost them to another area.

The other piece that is very important for both practitioners and the public is the digitalisation of the planning system. Many errors can be eliminated if the processes are clear to go through, and it enhances public participation if more of that is online. There is also the resourcing of the planning system. In a way, there are three legs to the stool that all have to work in parallel.