John Ellis (Fianna Fail)

When it comes to development plans, common sense should prevail. I know that for the bulk of county councillors it does. I put in almost 30 years on a local authority and in the early days there were very few planning problems because there was nobody there to live in a place or look for planning. The number of planning applications was minimal. Then we saw the big drive. We also saw some county development plans being influenced by officials who did not take the needs of the people of an area into consideration.