Lands Minister Stefan Zrinzo Azzopardi said Wednesday he finds it a bit difficult to understand that the Chamber of Architects first accepted that the Irrestawra Darek Scheme was going to be on a first come first served basis, and then proposed something different.

Zrinzo Azzopardi was replying to a question by The Malta Independent following a statement issued by the Kamra tal-Periti (Chamber of Architects) which said that what happened at the Irrestawra Darek scheme on Tuesday signalled the “epitome of the Planning Authority’s disregard for the profession”.

The website where the applications were being received crashed a few minutes after the scheme opened, and when it came back up again, the scheme had already been oversubscribed.

In his reply on Wednesday, the Minister said that the only request that the Chamber of Architects did before the application accepting process started, was for the opening of the applications to be at 12pm rather than 8am as was originally planned.

He added that the same document detailed how the system was to work on a first come first served basis, but the chamber had not complained about this.

The scheme was closed when it was over-subscribed.  He said that the IT team received an influx of applications without any precedence.