Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I have three points. First, it is a bit bizarre to say that planning regulations are of a technical nature and, therefore, we do not need to consult on those. I would have thought some of the more technical regulations would benefit from third-party engagement, particularly if it is by way of prescribed bodies and, therefore, you would be setting out the kinds of bodies that would be consulted on different levels.

Also, we have seen technical planning regulations and we have seen very technical section 28 ministerial guidelines go out to public consultation. Unfortunately, they had no Oireachtas oversight or engagement. I can think of, for example, building heights and design standards for apartments. They were very technical. In fact, most of those documents - from memory - comprised drawings, graphs and equations rather than text. Arguing that things of a technical nature do not need consultation is a mistake.

When the Minister of State outlined that there are sometimes occasions where this happens, that is precisely the problem. It is left up to the Minister and-or the officials of the day to decide whether there will be any consultation and with whom that consultation takes place. That is not an adequate approach because we could have a very progressive Minister who believes strongly in good public consultation. We could have officials with a very inclusive mindset who believe in the benefit of that technical expertise from outside bodies. We could also have officials and-or a Minister who does not want to do that and, therefore, the process and ultimately the outcome of the regulations could be enormously different. Therefore, it is better to have a simple, clear process that is outlined in legislation.

I have to pull the Minister of State up on his description of the planning advisory forum. It is not because I have any knowledge of it because we were not involved. We had an engagement through the committee, which was useful. If the Minister of State goes back to check the record, he will note there was very significant testimony to this committee during pre-legislative scrutiny, or organisations, such as the Irish Planning Institute, being incredibly critical of the planning forum and what they described as the enormous difference between very high-level theoretical discussions that happened at the planning forum and the actual content of the Bill when published. One of them said to the committee they were genuinely surprised at the content of it because it did not reflect anything that had happened at those high-level discussions. Again, that is another good example of a process that took up a lot of time.

There is no doubt the Minister of State's Department officials spent an incredible amount of time during that process, prior to the publication of the outline Bill in January or February of last year. Spending time engaging and consulting in a meaningful way are not the same thing. Therefore, I think it would be much better if the process for consultation with respect to regulations is set out in legislation. Everybody is then clear. We know who the prescribed bodies are and we can proceed on that basis. I know the Minister of State is not accepting the amendment but I hope he will at least listen to or consider the arguments we are making because I suspect we will return to this at some point in the future.