John Gormley (Dublin South East, Green Party)

The Department is only involved in a maximum of four stage approvals for a scheme and it is committed to discharging its obligations on those stages within a given timetable. The Deputy referred to schemes costing €3 million to €4 million. With schemes that cost less than €5 million, which account for almost 60% of schemes, my Department's approval is only required for briefs for appointment of consultants, which are usually cleared in a few weeks, and preliminary reports, where the approval target is six months.

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