Alex White (Labour)

I, too, will be very interested in the Report Stage debate on this aspect and what the Minister of State will bring before the House, particularly in regard to the phrase "commercial, economic or technical". I am not saying we should not do it but we should be careful about allowing a non-planning circumstance to find its way into planning decisions. If a person has funding at a particular stage and it runs out at a later stage, that is a serious position for him or her to be in and one has enormous sympathy for a person in that position. It may affect many others also who are depending on what is to happen but it is not a planning issue. I do not want to be too po faced about it but we are talking about planning legislation. People run out of money or are financially compromised and so on but, with respect, the planning code is not the place to deal with that issue. People know what to expect from the code. There are many rules and regulations in place for good reasons and if we start introducing to the planning code extraneous issues such as people running out of money, which I accept is a serious extraneous issue, we will undermine its integrity if we go too far.