Denis Landy (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I listened very closely to the Minister's evidence and I have it listed here. There were 15 decisions made by An Bord Pleanála on developments in excess of 100 units. The average length of time it took to get a decision was 78 weeks. There needs to be a further breakdown of that figure. Anecdotally and evidentially, the biggest delay in any planning application, whether it is for one unit or ten, is in the further information phase. Unless we have the statistic that breaks that down to show how much of the delay of the 78 weeks was based on the requirement by the developer or developers to provide further information, the evidence the Minister provided does not mean a whole lot. That is the first point I will make. Obviously, it was provided to the Minister by An Bord Pleanála and he can only relay information of which he has been made aware. We need to go behind the figure of 78 weeks and scope the detail of the 15 cases to discover the reason for the actual delay in each case. I am a betting man and I would have a fair punt with the Minister that the delay was with the developer more often than it was with the system. That is my first point.

Although the Minister has not agreed to introduce an amendment, he has said, in the context of the consultation with councillors, that he is not going to bypass local democracy and that the comments of councillors will be included in the report that will go to An Bord Pleanála on any big decisions. The Minister then spoke about staffing levels. He said that there will only be seven or eight extra staff in An Bord Pleanála at a cost of €1.4 million. I presume that includes the cost of resources for the staff as well. My understanding is that the staff employed by local authorities were taken on across the board and not just in planning offices. The Minister is doing everything possible to speed up this process. I say that in a genuine way. However, with the greatest of respect, I cannot understand how he cannot see the logic of doing this at local authority level and avoiding An Bord Pleanála in the first instance. Fifteen applications went to An Bord Pleanála and eight of those were in Fingal. Roughly, across the local authority system, as the Minister said, we might be looking at 100 of these applications in a year.