Mr. John Sheahan:

The devil will be in the detail as to where we finish up, as such. We must look at the ten-year plan as the overarching one. To use a rugby analogy; the plans should be rolling mauls in themselves. There will be issues, as has been said, where something is blocking something to happen because there is legislation there which we cannot review, because we are stuck in the timelines and so on and so forth. The robust reviews should get us out of those issues. We have no problem with the plans being monitored.

At present, at two years into a county development plan, one is looking at doing the chief executive’s review of it. By the time that is done, there is only another 12 months to go before starting again for the next six years. I am a little perplexed as to why the ten-year length is a major block if one has that constant rolling maul of updating and reviewing built into it in a proper fashion, wherever councillors have input into that. To date, we do not have much input into our reviews. It is a cursory glance to see if everything is still compliant. If something pops up in that, yes, we will do it, but the councillors may have issues on the ground which also need to be changed.