Mr. Seamus Boland:

If the Senator was shooting me, it must have been quite soft because her points were well put. The questions reflect the frustration of the owners, site owners and the people. We sat down with people to design the survey. If we got it slightly wrong, I have no problem with going back again. However, we designed it based on the input we got from those we were trying to survey.

In terms of the planning system, the Senator said that she has a site available. I would talk to the owner of that site and quickly ascertain its suitability and the reality in terms of planning. Unfortunately, we talked to many site owners who thought they had the ideal sites but when I investigated I realised that there was a serious amount of planning to be done in order to make them available. Some of it has nothing to do with the quality of the peat. It has to do with the access, the legal ownership and the other things that can come into play before you even start.

This is why we recommended the planning system. I am very pleased that all of the committee members have concentrated on that recommendation because I thought they might not have. To my mind, the crux of the issue is planning. The one message we got, survey or no survey, was that people did not believe they could trust the planning system. They did not believe it was fit for purpose in this area and therefore were reluctant to go forward. Senator Doherty is absolutely right that the planning system needs to change. You can say it needs to be modified or whatever you want but the planning system does not instil confidence in those whose sites might be available so it needs to change.

On the other hand, we also got submissions from people who were very worried about any more excavation. There is a very clear reality there that the planning needs to deal with the possible dangers caused in terms of hydrology. It certainly needs to manage that. It needs to ensure that no disasters happen afterwards. As rightly pointed out, it is people's right to object. If the planning system is diluted so that people cannot object, that creates another issue, probably a constitutional one, but I am not a lawyer so I will leave it at that.

I would be happy to speak to the Senator, or to anyone, in more detail about potential sites and the difficulties. However, we need to be clear that the planning system is not used to managing applications of this kind in terms of bogland and peatland. Until it is, we either go with our proposed recommendation or Government can look at a more fundamental examination of how it works.