John Gormley (Dublin South East, Green Party)

I must seek specific advice from the Attorney General on that issue.

Deputy Terence Flanagan has a question today on ghost estates and we have been in touch with the local authorities in this regard. We are establishing an inventory of the ghost estates and operating with that to find what we can do quickly, and we are co-operating with NAMA in as efficient a way as possible. As I said in my contribution, a member of NAMA is on that board to deal with that issue.

The operation of NAMA is a matter for the Minister for Finance but we are dealing with the planning issues in my Department. Particularly in the context of the new Planning and Development (Amendment) Act 2010, we want to ensure we have a core strategy, that the regional planning guidelines are adhered to at all times and that we have an evidence based approach to planning matters. For those reasons, we can be assured planning will be dealt with in a much more comprehensive way in the future.

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