James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail)

It will take more to deter us than a few cheap shots in op-eds in the Irish Examiner criticising me and others for having the courage to come in here and raise these matters. Deputy O'Sullivan is right that we need the guidelines. Local authorities need those guidelines and they need leadership from the Government. A message must go back to the custodians of the status quo who have let this matter carry on for so long, despite its being raised at parliamentary party level and ministerial level before the general election and again now, that we need answers. It seems to me we have been left in the lurch, unable to give constituents answers because we do not have those guidelines. There is a game of pass the parcel between the Department and local government when both need to come together to understand that the scale of development happening in areas such as my own in the Cork East constituency, and the rapid nature of those developments, requires urgent attention for reasons ranging from flooding to the large-scale size of the developments. As Deputy O'Sullivan rightly said, if someone wants to build a house on those lands, the planning process is far more tedious than it is when seeking to swallow up hundreds of acres for the development of these facilities.

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