As the recent annual report by the Ombudsman acknowledges, there has been a huge increase in planning applications in the past few years in line with the growth in the economy. Planning authorities have responded to this increase by improving their productivity enormously. This growth in applications has placed increasing demands on the officials and resources of planning authorities and, as the report highlighted, this has led to difficulties, in particular in relation to planning enforcement.
I am strongly of the view that the introduction of a culture of enforcement is critical to ensure that the planning control system works properly and for the benefit of the whole community. I therefore brought forward simplified and strengthened provisions on enforcement in the Planning and Development Act, 2000. These changes should address some of the concerns of the Ombudsman, in particular the requirement on local authorities to keep complainants updated as enforcement actions proceed.
The Planning and Development Act, 2000, was enacted on 28 August 2000. Because of the scale and complexity of the Act and the need to make regulations to give full effect to its provisions, it is necessary to commence the Act in stages. To date I have made three commencement orders bringing a number of parts of the Act into force. The commencement orders for the development control and enforcement provisions of the Act will be made in tandem with the necessary regulations, some of which will require the approval of both Houses of the Oireachtas. Work on these regulations is now at an advanced stage and a draft will be submitted to the Oireachtas in the next month.