Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail)
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At the outset, I advise members of the constitutional requirement that they must be physically present within the confines of the Leinster House complex to participate in public meetings. We have received apologies from Deputy Conor Sheehan.

Members are also reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable or otherwise engage in speech that may be regarded as damaging to the good name of that person or entity. Therefore, if members' statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that members comply with any such direction.

The first item on the agenda is the minutes. Can we take it the minutes of the meetings of 9 July and 15 July, which have been circulated, are agreed? Agreed. I thank the members.

Our next item is our correspondence. Many members might have looked at the items before and gone through them or have them with them. The first item of correspondence is a submission from Abbie Brennan sent on behalf of Mr. Ian Talbot, the chief executive of Chambers Ireland. It reiterates concerns previously raised in the organisation's pre-election manifesto to all parties and none regarding the risk of the State overextending itself without the necessary infrastructure to support sustainable economic and population growth. We will note and publish it. Is that agreed? Agreed.

No. 39 is a submission from Mr. David Howard, the director of Property Industry Ireland within IBEC, advising the committee on accelerating infrastructure delivery. Several of the recommendations relate to planning and infrastructure matters impacting housing delivery. A supplementary submission is provided on the improvement of the judicial review process in planning matters, detailing solutions it believes would improve the process. IBEC will be happy to meet the committee again if we choose to discuss its solution. At this early stage, I would suggest that before the recess in December we would produce a report like we did at the end of the last session. I think we will discuss that letter in detail at that point. Some people will see the merit in limiting judicial reviews and legislation in that regard is being planned by the Department of justice. Some people here may have different views on it. We could debate this issue for the day, so let us just wait and see. We will come back to it before we do a report. As I said, we have a Minister coming in to us today. Everyone could say something about this topic, but we will hold it over and come back to it. We will note and publish this correspondence and keep it as part of our work programme to come back to. Is that agreed for now? Agreed.

No. 40 is an email from Mr. Aidan Sweeney of IBEC, providing additional information requested by the members at our previous meeting. The main item in that correspondence was the organisation's submission to the Government's review of the national development plan and the consultation on accelerating infrastructure. It is just a short email. We will note and publish it. Is that agreed? Agreed.

No. 42 is from Ms Áine Ryan, executive officer at the Planning Regulator. This correspondence provides additional information requested by the members at the previous engagement with the Office of the Planning Regulator. It is on a topic mentioned previously, which we will have to come back to, namely, this idea of the common good when it comes to planning guidelines. This is covered in the correspondence, and information is also provided on the county development plans, the current duration of each one of them, detailing when they commence and when they expire. None of them are due to expire this year or next year, but some are due to pass their sell-by-date in 2027. The schedule is included. I would think there might be some changes in the planning situation that might alter some of these development plans in due course, but not for now. That is just information that we asked for. Also provided was information on local authority planning department reviews and recommendation issues, the reviews done and the number of county development plans. It is all there. It is just for us to note because we asked for this information. We note and publish it. Is that agreed? Agreed. We will come back to this issue of the common good, because it is relevant to infrastructure, before we get into any reports on the matter at all. We will stack this up as part of our work, if that is agreed, and come back to it.

The next correspondence is No. 48, an email from Ms Breda Casey from the Courts Service. This correspondence was additional information requested by members at our meeting on 9 July. There is information in this. We asked about staffing levels, which is there. We asked about the average duration of planning and environment proceedings from issue of proceedings to the final order because they can take forever in the court. Good information has been given except there is a gap. It states it has examined the sample of cases concluded in June and July this year and gives examples of the average and median times taken. It said the final order was made approximately 11 months after - that was the average duration. The median duration was approximately 6.5 months. If I am right, the average is the number of cases and the median is the most common. It is different from the average. The email does not tell us how many cases are being talked about, so we need to get that. I do not know if it is talking about five, 50 or ten cases. We are not getting a proper feel of that. We will ask for that. We also asked about judicial reviews refused. There were 98 applications for judicial reviews. Five cases were refused and leave was granted for 93. We asked about the percentage of cases proceeding via expedited procedure through the Courts Service. The service told us that, in total, there were 49 cases on the planning and environmental list seeking a hearing. It gave a note in relation to how the list was established. It is a bit of a history tour back to 2020 and the different stages. Those things take time. There are mainly internal matters in the services about whether it takes a case by written submissions, issued raised in the court where there is a case made for an urgent case or expedited case or standard case. It is internal but it is useful information for us to have. We will seek information about how many cases the email referred to to have a better feel for that is being talked about. We will note and publish that.

The next correspondence, No. 49, was a response to an invitation from Mr. Karl Richardson of the Commission for Regulation of Utilities. He is scheduled to appear before the environment and climate change committee today. We will reset a date; he had already committed to that meeting.

The next correspondence is Senator Stephenson's suggestion that we focus on the process of procurement and tendering. She had a second - No. 51 - that we look at the needs of people with disabilities as part of our work in terms of infrastructure. We have to agree with that. When we come to do our report, we will take on board matters.

Patricia Stephenson (Social Democrats)
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Perhaps we could have a session on procurement. A great witness would be Dr. Paul Davis. He is a lecturer on procurement. It has come up multiple times around our infrastructure projects. It would be a session focusing on procurement blockages, what is going wrong, why we are seeing issues like with the national children's hospital in terms of change orders going through, and how to fix that process so that, when procuring for large capital public projects in future, we get off to a good start. That could be very relevant for this committee. We have our new disability strategy and there are huge issues with access for people with physical disabilities. We could have a session on how to strengthen it with the Irish Wheelchair Association, for example, and groups like that to talk about what it means for them on a day-to-day basis. It would be great for our report. We could make recommendations on which Departments could be strengthened in terms of transport.

Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail)
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I hope next week we will come back with a detailed work schedule from now until the end of this session. I think the email we got about disability has gone to every committee to be taken on board. When it comes to infrastructure, the last thing we want is to put lifts in a hospital that are not wide enough to take electric wheelchairs. I have seen an example of that. They are designed for traditional wheelchairs but people now have electric wheelchairs and they cannot get into the lifts. There is a valid case that we look at disability issues as part of our infrastructure. We will have a work programme for next week. This is our first meeting back after the break and we are catching up on some correspondence.

We had an invitation to the meet the OPW. It is not able to make the meeting next week. It was in contact to ask if it could be postponed. That could be several weeks away. It said it was committed until 22 October with various meetings, some within the Department itself. We will set a date as soon as practical from our point of view. We will note that.

This will be new to members - there is an invitation from Mr. Niall Gleeson, CEO of Uisce Éireann, inviting the committee to visit the Ringsend wastewater treatment plant. Members will recall this was discussed at our meeting. It could be of benefit. It is a €500 million project. It will provide 40% of the county's wastewater treatment. It would be worth our while to make a visit. We have nobody in the slot for next week. It would be a great opportunity.

Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Can we not go to Leixlip?

Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail)
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We will get there yet. When you connect up to the Shannon, we will go. Despite this, I hear worries Uisce Éireann will not be able to support permission for new houses in Dublin because of the limitation. That is probably waiting on some of the water from the Shannon. The plant is a major infrastructural project affecting 40% of the country. A visit will be well worth our while. I suggest we do this during our committee slot this time next week. I will ask people to let the secretariat know by next Tuesday if they are available to attend. We can discuss transport. I envisage driving out. In theory, the Oireachtas can arrange transport if we need it. We will ask you to come back to the secretariat by Tuesday morning. If we have to arrange transport, we will. It will be just for the two-hour slot. This is with Uisce Éireann senior management. I will suggest the first hour be a tour of the plant and the second a sit-down with management in a meeting room to go through the issues we have as regards water services, not just at Poolbeg, but in other areas as well. It will be an open agenda. It will not be a formal committee meeting because that has to happen here. The meeting will be fully recorded and we can incorporate it into our work even though technically it is not a committee meeting. It is a visit.

Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein)
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Will it be recorded and made available?

Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail)
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No. It will not be like a tape recorder. We will be given a report from the meeting. While we are busy looking around, the hard-working staff will be keeping copious notes. We will have our own report and it will be part of our work but it will not be documented on the system because we are off site. It will be useful for us to go and look at one of the big plants. I am sure we will learn something from it.

That is all of our correspondence for today. The Minister, Deputy Chambers, is due to come in. We will suspend for a few moments while the Minister takes his seat.