State Bodies
Seanad Éireann — 2026-01-22
============================================================

Victor Boyhan (IND), Agricultural Panel

That was not my question. My question was to ask the Minister to provide information on progress. In fairness, the Minister of State has done that. There is no ambiguity about my question, however, the purpose of which was to ask the Minister to provide information on progress with the roll-out of the Plean-IT project to enable full citizen engagement. It is simple; it is a two-line Commencement matter.
I thank the Minister of State for the update because he highlighted matters of which I was not aware. He will know that I am in possession of correspondence. I will be happy to share it with the Department on Monday. I arranged to have a number of parliamentary questions asked in the Dáil by a network of TDs with which I work closely. We were told that there were possible legislative impediments holding back the board from progressing its full IT suite. We will need to look at that. It is very interesting that the Minister of State shared with us information on the lessons learnt report and I thank him for this. Clearly I will be looking to see a copy of it. It is important. We are here to improve the system and not to knock it.
I acknowledge we are making progress, the positivity in the board and how it is addressing other issues but these are for another day. My real focus is on citizens and on city and county councillors and their ability to fully interact to the maximum capacity that technology allows through an IT planning system that is fit for purpose and that will assist all of us, particularly with the national development plan and infrastructural challenges. The Minister of State has been to the fore in all of this and has been supportive of it. We want to encourage our citizens to rather than stymie or stop them from engaging fully with the planning process. I want to do this, and I know the Minister of State wants to do it. This is why I asked for an update. The update is helpful because I am now aware of things I did not know before. I appreciate the Minister of State bringing them to the table and I thank him.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-01-22/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:32+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-22