Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I will also speak to amendment No. 37. What the Minister of State said does not clarify it. If the Government wanted to use the word "quicker", it should have used the word "quicker". Part of the problem with this is if the language in the legislation is not clear, it will end up in court. In court, the threshold will not be that the Minister of State said at committee the intention behind the use of the word was X; people will look at the standard meaning of the word. That is why a dictionary definition is important. We did not invent the dictionary definition, which states expedient means convenient and practical, although possibly improper and immoral. A piece of language is being put in that is a hostage to fortune. I do want to make too much of this because it is one of a plethora of examples of unclear language in the Bill.

I will go back to my earlier question. The word "necessary" is sufficient. If the Government believes it is necessary to produce a regulation, it should go and produce the regulation. We can argue about whatever the process is later. I do not see what we get by including the word "expedient" because the implication is we might have a regulation that is expedient but unnecessary. That is what that phrase means. It gives the option of something that is not actually needed but could be expedient. If we wanted to play interpretative bingo with the word, we can say it could mean politically expedient as opposed to expedient from an efficiency or time point of view. To go back to Deputy O'Callaghan's point, for far too long, politically expedient decisions have been made through our planning process with devastating effects. Again, the Minister of State knows all about that because he campaigned against much of it at an earlier point in his career.

I will ask a final question on this and will then speak to amendment No. 37. Is there an example of regulation that is expedient but not necessary? If the Minister of State can give a real-life example, I might be willing to be convinced. On amendment No. 37, and this speaks directly to Deputy O'Callaghan's point, the Minister of State's officials have gone through with us and explained the very substantial volume of regulations that will be required on foot of the Bill. We have a separate set of amendments around that, which I will come to shortly. There is also much more scope for regulations of a much more significant measure. The amendment seeks to constrain the parameters and scope of this, or any future Minister, as regards the range of those regulations, and to adopt a much more conservative approach to regulations that are required. Increasingly, if the finer grain detail of our planning system is done by way of regulations, especially those that are subject to no Oireachtas scrutiny, that is then a recipe for poor-quality regulations. That is not because the officials do not write them well, but because those officials could be put under undue pressure to produce regulations in short periods for politically expedient reasons, as per the wording in section 4(2), with very negative effects. We have seen that in a variety of planning and other legislation that has gone through the Department, in both the current and previous Oireachtas. Will the Minister of State give me an example of an expedient but not necessary regulation? I would be very interested to hear it.