Seanad debates
Wednesday, 11 December 2002
Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill, 2002: Committee and Remaining Stages.
I am not fundamentally differing from the Senator. It was a judgment call. The purpose of my action was to maintain supply, but I was not prepared to maintain the planning permissions and get nothing back for the State. I wanted a community gain and the fastest, cleanest and most efficient way of doing that was through the provisions in the Bill. I spent six months considering this issue, including weekends at home trying to figure out how to get this into the market. By and large, because it is a ring-fenced and specific issue, the fastest and best way to get the community gain is through the action I have taken. The other course of action was fraught with legal difficulties which would have brought us far into the future, in which case I might as well have abandoned the provision and left things as they were. They were the options.
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