Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I assure Deputy Ó Broin it will no longer take 18 months to get approval. There was an eight-stage approval process. It is now down to four stages. There is a real effort to streamline now.

We have given a commitment to chief executives that once they get projects across the line in terms of the Part 8 process and once they make applications in respect of those projects to the Department, we will ensure a quick turnaround in respect of them. We will send project teams to local authority offices to tease through the issues and get through the stages in days rather than weeks. That is what we are trying to do.

We must ensure that there is integrity in the decision-making process. We are spending millions of euro in public money and the important point is that we can account for all of it. We can account for the value that is being derived from those projects. We ensure that mistakes have not been made and that we are not paying too much for rapid-build projects or, for that matter, anything else.

We must have a robust process but the Department and I - people are working very hard on this - are committed to ensuring that we move through those stages far faster than has been the case previously and that we have face-to-face meetings to get that done, rather than having an e-mail or letter engagement which often gives rise to delays for all sorts of reasons. We will move on that.

With regard to south Dublin, we have told chief executives to be ambitious. We have signed off on many new projects for next year. If there are more, we will consider trying to accommodate them as long as the ambition is consistent with the policy direction around mixed-tenure developments and building good, balanced communities.

See this speech in context