Ms Oonagh Buckley:

I thank Deputy Murphy for raising the issue again. I have learned real lessons, because I should not have been the story. The story should have been about how An Bord Pleanála is restoring itself. That was a mistake I made. As to the comment on being intrigued, I said it in a positive sense. I often find that when professional bodies have their annual get-togethers, they tend to talk to each other in a sort of echo chamber. What was really good here was the plan to bring in someone of a different mindset and from a different background to talk to them honestly about where he saw things were going. I knew there had been a vigorous question-and-answer session that morning, so I said that something similar should happen. I said it positively rather than negatively, which was how it was taken up in subsequent commentary. The other irony is that I was actually agreeing with that gentleman. I was using some reported comments he had made in the media where he said there was going to be a lot of litigation in this space. I was saying that I agreed with him when he said that. The context in which I said that was that I said that An Bord Pleanála has not been very good at adapting to this environment, that it needs to adapt to it and as quickly as possible and that it has to make better decisions. To that end, we need to recruit internal lawyers. The process in that regard is under way. We need to train people successfully to make sure we make robust decisions, because I was very taken aback at the level of concessions. I knew that there had been such a high level of concessions of judicial reviews coming to the board. That should not happen with any public body. The fault lies with the board. It does not lie with anybody challenging the decisions of the board. I completely garbled the message, however, because that was not what was picked up. It was a real lesson for me. I have to learn from it for the future.