Eugene Murphy (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State can talk about that when he is summing up. This issue, however, must be dealt with. The situation we have where people from way outside of an area, from the east or south of the country, for example, can object to something going on in Roscommon, and they have no interest in any property there or anything else, is something that must just be done away with. End of story.

The subject of judicial reviews is also going to be addressed widely in this Bill and this does need to be done. When we go through the amendments and the various Stages of this legislation, we will see the importance of dealing with the whole area of judicial review.

I must focus on An Bord Pleanála. I welcome that more staff have been approved and posts are being filled. If I am correct, more than 300 people will be working there when all these posts have been filled. This increase is badly needed. I think it was Senator Boyhan, as well as others, who said earlier that it is heartbreaking to watch people who have been granted planning permission and are trying to put their family home in place waiting to start. I have young people in this situation in my county of Roscommon. They are waiting and waiting, they are calling me and I am making calls to An Bord Pleanála. The process is going on month after month. It is simply not good enough. This situation is deeply frustrating and very insulting to these hard-working people who go out to earn a living and try to rear their families and then they cannot go ahead with the building of their homes. They have gone through such scrutiny at the local level. As the Minister of State will know, getting planning permission at local level in any county now is not plain sailing. It is necessary to go through many hoops to secure it. Any application for planning permission is considered in depth. There should not be this hold-up for people seeking planning permission. Up to 20,000 applications are waiting to be processed by An Bord Pleanála and are not being adequately dealt with. I hope that as a result of what the Minister of State and the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, and others are doing in beefing up An Bord Pleanála, we will have a swift moving on of these applications and the big blockage there will be removed. It is deeply unfair that this situation exists for people all around the country who have legally granted planning permission locally, only for it to go to An Bord Pleanála and be held up. I will have more to say about this matter when we deal with the Bill further down the line.

This legislation is badly needed. It is a major step forward. We will have our agreements and disagreements over the coming weeks. Amendments may be agreed to or defeated, but, all in all, there is a lot of good stuff in this Bill and it is badly needed in our system. I hope we can move it forward as quickly as possible.