Victor Boyhan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State and his officials. I can recognise some of the logic in what Senator Higgins is saying but she might have made a proposal within her own argument. The Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage is, and has always been, for as long as I have been around, a very active and progressive committee, and perhaps, as she suggested, it is something the joint committee could look at. It has a work programme, as every committee has, and it could be matter for it at any time if it wanted to have a specific focus on this particular area. All the planning authorities will have this data and sometimes it is about pulling all of that together. While pulling it all together is time-consuming, at least it would be there somewhere.Perhaps that is something that the Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage, of which Senator Cummins is also a member, would be interested in examining after a considerable period of time. We do not want to be too premature. This will need to run. There are mechanisms there and perhaps the suggestion of the committee is a better one than a report. It seems with all legislation now that there is a request for reports to be laid before the Houses and we simply do not have the time to get through them all. If we want to delve into and analyse matters in granular detail then the aforementioned committee would possibly be the best way to do that. The committee could request the relevant information from the Department at any time but this legislation needs to run for a considerable period before we would even look at that.