Paddy Burke (Fine Gael)

I believe the proposed amendments will create a great deal of red tape. I do not know how many towns have a population of approximately 5,000 people. Moreover, the Minister of State noted earlier that this legislation will not prohibit any local area plan from being put in place. Consequently, hundreds of local area plans may be produced. If local authorities prepare plans for hundreds of local areas, they will be obliged to notify the Minister and An Bord Pleanála regarding any consultations that took place with residents. Will this not necessitate the movement of a great deal of information from local authorities to An Bord Pleanála and to the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government? Who will read all this information? The county manager and his or her planning officials will have dealt with the matter in detail with locally elected councillors and probably with the residents' associations. However, that will not be good enough as the Minister and An Bord Pleanála must be notified. While Members probably will deal with An Bord Pleanála in another section, I note it is unable to deal with its existing workload as it takes it six months to deal with anything at present. Nevertheless, the board must receive all this information. I consider this to be a wasted exercise in red tape. It probably will entail departmental officials reading details of meetings that took place between residents, local councillors and local authority staff in the formulation of local area plans.