Ms Oonagh Buckley:

The Deputy has asked an extremely good question. One of the first things I did when I arrived at the board was to approve an apology, to be put on our website, to people whose appeals and applications were held up by the difficulties in An Bord Pleanála. I am very happy to repeat that apology to those persons who, through absolutely no fault of their own, have had their household developments held up because of the difficulties within An Bord Pleanála. I extend that apology to the staff of the board because they, through no fault of their own, have had to deal with a lot of very difficult discussions with members of the public about what was going on in An Bord Pleanála. That statement was also aimed at making sure the staff had something they could say that was fair to them.

I did consider making a corporate apology. As the Deputy says, I was not on the board at the time, so it would not be a personal apology. I am happy to do so. However, An Bord Pleanála, as an organisation, has already apologised to the people whose applications and appeals have been held up. I am happy to repeat that today. It is most unfortunate.

The Deputy mentioned the IPI conference. I am very sorry that I became the story there. That should not have been the case. I am very sorry I name-checked somebody who was not in the room to answer those questions. I should not have done that. I have to learn a lesson from this. The first part is not to name-check people and, second, I have to understand in future that, in this role, people are interested in everything I say and I should write a script and stick to that script. That is my learning from what happened at the conference and I am very happy to say I will not be doing that in future.