Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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To be clear, the fine is not to absolve the board of responsibility or further litigation. It is to penalise the board and to try to incentivise the board to make decisions in a timely fashion because that 16 weeks applies whether it is year one of a county development plan or year four. Do not try to muddy the waters. We are going really well here. The question is simply this. We are the Committee of Public Accounts. We are about value for money. I hope the €10,000 fines will be eradicated completely when the board has its new staffing levels. Does Ms Buckley agree that the developers who applied under what we now regard as an old county development plan in many counties had a legitimate expectation that their applications would be decided in a timely fashion in the lifetime of the county development plans that they applied under? Is that unreasonable?