Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Actually, when we were discussing this, one of the things we asked the officials at the time was why this would be done. They said one instance could be a case in which a quarry owner who had been illegally quarrying material wished to retrospectively regularise that but also to expand his quarrying activity. In fact, in that case, the new bit of development is not about fixing or cleaning up the mess he made, but about expanding his activities. Rather than forcing the person to have a substitute consent application over here and a brand-new planning application over there, this approach would let them roll those applications in together. We were very critical of this at the time because we were saying, "Hang on a second, the applicant had been breaking the rules for a while, so why allow them to roll the two applications into one?". We were defeated on this aspect though. What I am saying is that in such a case where there is, as part of the substitute consent application, a new element of development, surely that should have a timeline as all new development does, which ordinarily is five years. This would seem reasonable.