In recent months, there has been huge recruitment to An Bord Pleanála and cases are starting to move once again. However there is now a trend where people are appealing the residential zoned land tax, RZLT, which becomes a liable taxation payment on 1 January. All those cases are being appealed to An Bord Pleanála and it is clogging up the system. Last week, 146 cases were decided by An Bord Pleanála, of which 79 related to tax. They had nothing to do with building houses or any sort of development, whether schools, hospitals or whatever. It is clogging up half if not more of the weekly case profile. It was 108 cases the week before last and 84 the week before that. Surely, taxation belongs in a whole different realm and not that of planning or appeals to An Bord Pleanála. Is there some way of unclogging that backlog? It will continue every week until we get to 31 December because that is when that tax at a rate of 3% becomes liable on 1 January.

If we are talking about the same tax, the liability has been deferred by a year because we appreciate some changes have to be made to it as some anomalies have arisen that were not anticipated. We have given An Bord Pleanála a lot more work to do and there is a lot more building going on in the country. That is great but it means there is even more work for it to do from the private sector as well. Recognising that, it has been provided with lots of additional resources. There are now 15 board members. They can meet in formations of five and have several meetings a day in some cases. There are 300 to 400 posts approved in total. I appreciate they have been given a lot of work to do and it is important they are resourced properly. We are supporting them in that.