We have apologies from Deputy Sheehan. I advise members of the constitutional requirement that they must be physically present within the confines of the Leinster House complex to participate in public meetings. Members are also reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable or engage in speech that may be regarded as damaging to the good name of a person or entity. Therefore, if members' statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction.

The first item on the agenda is the minutes of the meeting of 8 October. Are they agreed? They are. I thank members.

The next item is the plan for future meetings. I will outline what we are suggesting. Next week we are continuing with people on the construction side. We have invited the Construction Industry Federation and Murphy Ireland, which does work nationally and internationally. Today is more about house building. We have invited John Paul Construction, who we have heard of as well. It is a main contractor in building infrastructure with experience both in Ireland and abroad, which is good. Then we have the Dornan Group, which is a mechanical and electrical contractor, primarily in the data centre area. We have a good mix between the major infrastructure projects, data centres and housing. We will circulate this schedule after the meeting, once we have agreed it. On 19 November, we have invited the Society of Chartered of Chartered Surveyors, the Royal Institute of Architects and the Irish Planning Institute to get their views. On 26 November, we have invited EirGrid, the ESB and Gas Networks Ireland. On 3 and 10 December, we propose, depending on which date suits the different people, to have Bord na Móna and the Commission for the Regulation of Utilities together and for the other meeting we propose to invite Sean O'Driscoll, who members will know is the chairperson of the accelerating infrastructure task force. That report was issued during the summer and the Government has been considering it since. It will obviously be outlining its plans on that around the end of November and beginning of December. We have already suggested that Mr. O'Driscoll be available at the next meeting after the launch, which could be 3 and 10 December. We will swap those to scheduled meetings as required. As for 17 December, the Office of Public Works was scheduled and cancelled at short notice a while ago, so we will put it back on the list. We will continue our work in the new year. I had suggested we do a report on our work to date but we do not have enough done just yet.

I would prefer if we came back in January and produced a report on all the work we are talking about. If we produce a report in December we would have to be at it now and some of our latter meetings will not be included in it. I would like to get everything done and then work on a new report early in the new year, with a launch as early as practicable in the new year, having completed all of the work we will have done by then.

At one stage I made a suggestion on having a procurement session. I do think this is something we have not covered and it really is essential for finding out what goes on in the procurement and tendering processes that have led to some of the major scandals we have had around procurement. Making sure we get things right from the start will be a big piece of infrastructure delivery. I made one suggestion of a professor-----

You did, yes.

I cannot remember his name. I have also been in touch with someone else and I can email the secretariat on this. This is something that would be very good to have. Separately I made suggestion of having a disability group before the committee. It would be important to prioritise this. I appreciate there are not many sessions left before the end of December but we want to make sure we are really reflecting society as a whole, and reflecting the disability strategy in infrastructure planning would be important.

We will do this. The last couple of meetings are a little bit fluid at present. We have suggested the OPW, perhaps on 17 December. This is only a suggestion made by me in the past five minutes. There is a bit of space and we will come back to it. We will take the gist of it to 3 or 10 December.

Can I suggest that along with the CRU, Eir and ESB, we invite Bord na Móna?

Yes, it is-----

It is already there.

I mentioned it for the same day as the CRU. I mentioned Bord na Móna.

I apologise. I did not realise it was on it.

That is as good an outline as we can do. Before the break there may be an opportunity to deal with disability. It would be wrong to have a big report on housing without having even discussed the topic. There is also infrastructure in general and the procurement issue. We will do an interim report early in the new year. We will continue our meetings. The hard-working staff will be preparing the report behind the scenes for our consideration, and we will move on a bit further as well.

I have another suggestion. We had the Courts Service before the committee giving its perspective on judicial review. Judicial review comes up time and time again in relation to the work of the committee. It might be good to have some groups in, perhaps environmental groups, that see it from a different perspective because we need to have a holistic response in what we are doing here. There was a time when we did not have much judicial review in Ireland. We now have more judicial review. Why is this happening? Is it something to do with the planning process itself? Are decisions being made that allow for judicial review because bad planning is leading to it? As we know, quite a high threshold is required to access a judicial review. Before we even get to that stage what is happening in the planning process that is leading to more judicial review cases?

That would be very good. We had An Coimisiún Pleanála in and we asked about the staffing. It more or less said it felt it was adequately staffed. We have to make sure the onus is not only on the environmental sector. We have climate laws and planning should be adherent to the climate Act. I do not think we should be letting people off the hook, or the Government off the hook, by blaming judicial reviews for delays in infrastructure so I would support that.

I thank Deputy Cronin. Obviously we have judicial reviews as an access to justice element and there is the Aarhus Convention. To really strengthen the work and reporting we are doing, it would be important to reflect these two perspectives.

I totally agree. And, in fact, because it is so much in my head I forgot to write it down. Can we agree this as the approximate framework? The judicial review meeting might not be held until January.

Perhaps that might be for January.

It might be the first week in January. The committee secretariat will be working on drafting a report and will incorporate these. I expect it will be February before we have a report.

Let us make sure we do not allow people to apportion blame where it should not be.

Yes, we want it to be holistic and we want to feel that we have got every perspective in it.

It would be good to get differing views on it.

The secretariat might have lots of names but if it is looking for names I am very happy to be emailed and I will put some suggestions forward.

Okay, that is good.

We will now move to correspondence. Members of the committee recently visited Ringsend and Poolbeg and we will have a draft report on this, which be on the agenda for the next meeting. I am informed that it is normal practice when a committee visits a location that there is a report. The report will contain the responses to a lot of the additional questions we asked on site on the day. They have just come in. We will circulate it before the weekend. It is very in line with what happened down there. It is just a report on the questions we asked, what we saw and the information we received subsequent to the meeting, with a view to clearing it for next week. It will be circulated well in advance of the next meeting.

We have five items of correspondence. No. 58 is a suggestion to invite ESB Networks and Bord na Móna in with the Commission for the Regulation of Utilities. I think that is agreed.

No. 59 is additional information from the Irish Academy of Engineering providing additional information following our meeting on 8 October. We note and publish this. This means people are free to use the information as they see fit. It has now been noted and published.

No. 60 is from the Association of Consulting Engineers of Ireland with additional information following our meeting on 8 November. We can note and publish this.

The next item is from the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland requesting a meeting with the joint committee. We have already suggested 19 November and it will come before the committee. We will note and publish this.

Then there is a letter from Miroslav Plevný, chair of the national economy, agriculture and transport committee of the Senate of the Parliament of the Czech Republic. The correspondence was received from the embassy of the Czech Republic. It is a letter to the Chairman thanking him and members for meeting the delegation when they visited Ireland recently, and inviting the committee to visit Dukovany nuclear power plant and to continue the dialogue on land protection and electricity supply. A lot of the Czech Republic's energy is nuclear power. The invitation is to visit a nuclear power plant. We would not do anything like that just to see a nuclear power plant. We would have to look at solar, wind and whatever. Do members have any suggestion? Will we just note it and hold it over? I do not think we are of a mind to make a definitive decision on this here today.

I do not think so.

As a new TD, when a letter like this comes through is it an invitation whereby the senders would host us and pay?

Every Oireachtas committee has a budget for travel, including this committee. All Oireachtas committees have it. The normal numbers that travel on a trip such as this from the committee membership is three. It can go to four for but we have to get special sanction for four to travel. The Oireachtas committee has a budget to cover flights and accommodation. We will hold off making a decision unless people want to accept or reject it immediately. Will we just hold it off?

Is it to go to see a nuclear plant? Is that on our horizon?

It is not something that we are looking at at the moment but it is certainly something we should be thinking about for the future. They have become an awful lot safer over the years. While people of our age and older think of Sellafield straight away, in fairness there are an awful lot of smaller units and other nuclear plants across the world which are completely different and an awful lot safer than they were in the past. It is an option for us as part of our infrastructure which provides for the country.

I would like to say one thing. I am not sure if everyone was there on the day we met the Czech delegation. The reason the invitation is probably specifying the nuclear power plant is because we called it out as an interesting difference.

Between-----

We called out nuclear because we do not have it and the Czech Republic does. When we were going through various infrastructure and spoke about energy we did allude to the fact it is something that is key which we are missing. This is just in case people are wondering about the context.

You had a meeting with them.

We met them here.

There was a delegation here.

There was delegation and we met them.

The committee was invited.

Nuclear came up. It was just an interesting difference between the two. This is the context of why they are asking, if people are wondering.

I think it would be a brave TD who would suggest a nuclear power plant for their constituency. We should probably look at it but I am not in favour of nuclear power in Ireland. We should be available to research it, at least to be able to put a decision in a report to state we have looked at it. I would say not to agree with it yet.

I am neutral on it as well. What I will say is that it came up in a conversation that the cost of electricity in Ireland is one of the highest in Europe.

One of the reasons for this is that most other countries have nuclear, which is cheaper, and that is a fact that comes into that debate. Second, when we plug in something in our houses, there is nuclear power there. Two interconnectors from England have nuclear power in them every time they are plugged in, and the interconnector with France will allow electricity to flow from the Continent, which will include nuclear power. I am just putting that on the record. I am not saying I am advocating it but we do use nuclear-powered electricity in this country. We do not generate it on the island but we are happy to use it when we need it. I just put that as part of the context, so maybe we will just chew on it for a while.

I was not for one second advocating that we would put in nuclear power but what I was saying was that we should be looking at it as an option. Very small modular units that seem to be very safe have been piloted across Europe and are another way of looking at it.

Would it work for the just transition?.

I think it probably would.

I remind members to speak through the Chair, as we are in public session.

We should be an evidence-based committee, so while I would have a negative attitude towards this, I think it is no harm to research it.

Yes, perhaps we can seek the help of the Oireachtas research facility. I would be shocked if it has not been looked at it somewhere before. An information paper on it would be useful.

Nuclear is worth considering but it is a lot more than just a nuclear power plant. There need to be elements of academia and experience included. There a lot of comparisons and skill sets needed to make it happen.

All I would say is that when the group from the Czech Republic was here, its members encouraged us to at least look at it. We will get a bit of research done on the topic and we will hold off on the discussion. We can see already that people have strong views on the matter, which is fine, so we will come back to the topic. Okay, so there has been no decision there. We will come back after some research. This concludes our correspondence. Before we move on to the next item on the agenda, we will suspend briefly while the witnesses take their seats.