Planning and Development and Foreshore (Amendment) Bill 2022: [Seanad Bill amended by the Dáil] Report and Final Stages
Seanad Éireann — 2022-12-15
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Alice-Mary Higgins (IND), National University of Ireland

That is very dangerous and that is the kind of situation that happens when people almost want to take advantage of people's other commitments and the fact they must schedule their time. Again, it leads to bad decisions. I am not looking to remove the provision of remote conferencing but I am saying that if there is a remote meeting, 72 hours' notice should be given. That is very reasonable. There would be an obligation to inform the board members, all 14, that there will be a meeting. Those who can make it can attend but we would not have the situation whereby decisions were made in a rush which are bad and end up being rightly challenged by judicial review because either there was not the right expertise in the room or, in some very unfortunate cases, as we have seen in the past, there was opportunism attached to those decisions.
These amendments are reasonable. Whatever about the quorum, which I like as an idea, the 72 hours' notice is fairly reasonable. I know we are all in a hurry but if you cannot give three days' notice of an important meeting, that will have serious consequences and that is a problem.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2022-12-15/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:51:26+00:00
Sitting date: 2022-12-15