Dick Roche (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)

That is not quite correct. I am not quibbling, this is significant. Under the legislation, there was a mechanism that would apparently allow the Minister to trigger an extension at the request of a local authority. In 1997, Monaghan County Council found itself in difficulties and the dates were changed, by coincidence to dates roughly the same as those I now propose. When we discussed this in the committee, my advice was that we could do that but a general change would require primary legislation.

In more recent years, there was a court case on Carrickmines and the judgment stated that a Minister should not use his powers to make regulations to amend primary law. That causes difficulties here because the 1992 Act imprudently specifies the dates in a table in the Schedule to the Act.

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