Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage debate

General Scheme of the Planning and Development Bill 2022: Discussion (Resumed)

Chairman

Good afternoon everybody, and welcome to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage. Today we are carrying out further scrutiny on the draft planning and development Bill 2022. We are joined by a number of groups which have direct involvement in the planning system, both at council and regional levels. From the County and City Management Association, CCMA, we are joined by Mr. Kevin Kelly, chief executive of Mayo County Council; Ms Mary Henchy, director of services in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council; and Mr. Kieran Kehoe, director of services in Waterford City and County Council. I do not think Ms AnnMarie Farrelly, chief executive of Fingal County Council, is here. From the Association of Irish Local Government, AILG, we are joined by Councillor Pat Fitzpatrick, president, and Councillor Nick Killian. From the Local Authority Members Association, LAMA, we are joined by Councillor Micheál Anglim, chairperson, Councillor Terry Shannon, vice-chairperson, and Councillor John Sheahan, general secretary. From the Northern and Western Regional Assembly, NWRA, we are joined by Mr. David Minton, director, Ms Claire Bannon, and Mr. David Kelly. There are a number of councillors from the AILG in the Public Gallery, including Councillor Pat McGowan and Councillor Nicholas Crossan, as well as Mr. Tom Moylan and Ms Elaine Lynch. We have a really good attendance here today, and I thank you all for coming.

This is the fifth in a series of about ten meetings. We are looking at the draft Bill that has been published. We have had the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, An Bord Pleanála and the Office of the Planning Regulator in. We have had good engagement with a number of other groups as well, and we have had written submissions. We are delighted the witnesses are able to attend today because they play a critical role in the planning system and in the crafting of development plans, while the regional assemblies play a vitally important role in regional planning.

The format is as follows: members have a seven-minute slot to ask a question. It would be really helpful if they directed the question to someone in particular because it will speed things up. The seven minutes includes time to ask the question and to get the answer to it.

I remind members of the constitutional requirement that members must be physically present within the confines of the place where Parliament has chosen to sit, namely Leinster House, in order to participate in public meetings. For those witnesses attending in the committee room, they are protected by absolute privilege in respect of their contributions to the meeting today. This means they have an absolute defence against any defamation action for anything they say at the meeting, but members and witnesses are expected not to abuse the privilege they enjoy. It is my duty as Chair to ensure that this privilege is not abused; therefore, if their 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.

Members and witnesses are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the Houses or an official either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable.

I think we have almost full attendance. We have one committee member who has been absent for a short period of time, but for the very best reasons. On behalf of the committee, I offer our congratulations to our colleague, Senator Rebecca Moynihan, on her new arrival, baby Margo. Congratulations to Senator Moynihan, Margo and Barra.

I am going to invite the witnesses to make their opening statements in the following order: Mr. Kelly from the CCMA, Councillor Fitzpatrick from the AILG, Councillor Anglim from LAMA, and Mr. Minton from Northern and Western Regional Assembly. If witnesses could keep their opening statements to about five minutes, it would be very helpful. I invite Mr. Kelly to make his opening statement.

Mr. Kevin Kelly

I thank the Chair and members of the committee. As outlined, I am the chief executive of Mayo County Council and chair of the CCMA committee on housing, building and land use. I am accompanied by Ms Mary Henchy and Mr. Kieran Kehoe. I extend apologies on behalf of Ms AnnMarie Farrelly, who is in the throes of implementing the current legislation on the development plan in her area.

On behalf of the CCMA, I thank the committee for its invitation and I look forward to assisting in relation to the pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft planning and development Bill 2022. The CCMA welcomes the consolidation of planning legislation and supports any measures that will improve the effectiveness of the overall planning system, not just for practitioners, but for the public in general. We are currently engaged in a detailed review of the content of the draft Bill and will be making a comprehensive submission to the Department. Our focus today is more on the important high-level issues that we would like to bring to the committee's attention.

The CCMA welcomes the addition of the purpose section to the legislation, but considers that the role of local authorities is somewhat under-represented. Given that planning authorities are at the coalface in the planning system with a democratic mandate catering for the full suite of planning functions, it is considered that the purpose section of the new Act should clearly define planning authority function and role. The CCMA believes that the purpose can reinforce the principal aims of improving the quality of life for all our people, while at the same time striving to implement the United Nations sustainable development goals. The purpose could also reflect the aim to ensure that there is balanced regional development which will support the continued growth not only of our main cities, but also our towns and villages.

The CCMA supports the move to give full statutory effect to a plan-led planning system, one which works in accordance with the overall hierarchy of national planning policy documents. We strongly endorse the move to a ten-year cycle for development plans. The preparation and making of city and county development plans and other urban area plans, priority area plans or joint area plans not only set the framework for development of different types and uses, but more importantly, must strive to enhance our communities, whether large or small, urban or rural, and create a sense of place so that the future Ireland we all inhabit is a better place.

The existing Planning and Development Act was drafted in 1999, when strategic environmental assessment, appropriate assessment and strategic flood risk assessment did not exist. A number of different types of plans are now being introduced, and there must be clarity around where these will be appropriate regarding size, scale etc. The new Act should simplify the plan-making hierarchy underneath the development plan, rather than having multiple different plans. There is concern regarding the level of complexity, consultation and the indicated timelines which we feel are not aligned with the current resource availability. The CCMA urges that consideration be given to replacing the proposed schedule for the preparation of these plans within a one- to two-year period to at least a three- to four-year period or more.

It is noted that the new Bill refers only to objectives and strategies, but not policies, which would convey an overall direction of travel. The experience is that policies are a necessary part of development plans, and it is recommended that they are included.

Streamlining the development management process and making sure that it is robust to legal challenge is, of course, something all in the planning system want to ensure. However, we must also ensure that the system is easy to use for all our citizens, that it is clear and unambiguous in its operation, and that openness and transparency are to the forefront.

The CCMA and the local authority sector are involved in the implementation of all sections of the planning system, even when the planning decisions are made by An Bord Pleanála, or as it will be known in future, the Planning Commission. It rests with the local authority planning sections to ensure compliance and enforce the conditions of said decisions. In the proposed plan-led system, when it comes to assessing an application, a local authority or An Bord Pleanála should in the first instance rely on the development plan for its assessment. Only in specified circumstances, such as an updated ministerial statement, should it have to look beyond the council's development plan, bearing in mind the detailed statutory process that such plans will have come through. We welcome the need to ensure increased consistency with the development plans of the relevant local authorities in all decisions of An Bord Pleanála.

From our analysis to date, there appears to be a lack of reference to a development contribution scheme. The ring-fenced income from development contribution schemes approved by the elected members of each local authority is an important contributor to the capital plans of all local authorities and the delivery of infrastructure to support existing and future development. It is critical that such a provision is included in the new Act.

Since the first Planning and Development Act, the legislation has become more intricate and the extent of matters to be considered at application stage has vastly increased. The multitude of policies that a decision-maker must have regard to, or decisions must accord with, has also expanded. We would propose that the timelines for consideration of planning applications afforded to local authorities should be increased, particularly for larger, more complex developments including those requiring detailed environmental assessment.

The CCMA acknowledges the workload imposed on An Bord Pleanála. However, strict adherence to the timeframes that will be set out in the draft Bill is critical to ensure the necessary confidence and certainty on decision-making timeframes for the delivery not just of critical strategic infrastructure and much-needed housing supply, but also for economic development proposals, so that we maintain our international competitiveness as a location of choice in which to invest.

We note the introduction of enforcement authorities for specific complex activities, such as quarries and waste management, but it must be ensured that there is no duplication of effort and difference in decisions made. If such functions are to be removed from planning authorities, consideration of establishing a national enforcement authority as opposed to regional authorities would avoid duplication in establishment and operational costs, and would ensure a consistent approach across the country.

The inclusion of the formal taking-in-charge of an estate in the draft Bill is welcomed. This brings a natural end to the development of an estate from zoning, to grant of permission and on to taking-in-charge. However, the difficulty in respect of taking-in-charge is often the availability of resources to undertake work required, or to meet the residents' expectations as opposed to the statutory process itself.

As members are aware, the CCMA prepared an analysis of the existing resource deficiencies within the local authority planning system. This analysis identified an immediate need for at least 541 extra staff across technical and administrative roles, and to provide for the full and effective implementation of all parts of the new Act when commenced. These resources and more will need to be put in place, and there are ongoing discussions with the Department on this matter.

The committee will understand how complex the issue of planning has become, and the CCMA welcomes the recognition by the Department that further and ongoing training of our planning staff is required. The CCMA is working closely with the Department and the Office of the Planning Regulator to devise and deliver a substantial training programme for both our existing and additional staff.

In conclusion, members of the committee will fully appreciate that this is significant legislation with a lot of detail, and as a sector we are working through all sections of the draft Bill to ensure that we understand fully the intent of the provisions and how they might work. We will be submitting our detailed considerations to the Department on all relevant matters.

There are many detailed provisions that may impact planning authorities in carrying out their planning function and we will be seeking to give our best advice on where these impacts may require further consideration. To ensure its successful implementation, clear guidance needs to be developed for all stakeholders. The Office of the Planning Regulator has developed many such publications to date, which are of huge benefit to the public and their interaction with and understanding of the planning system. The CCMA welcomes the opportunity to engage with all stakeholders to ensure that all functions of the planning process are protected as we transition to the new Act.

The CCMA welcomes the draft Bill and the opportunities it can present to improve the effectiveness of the planning system. We will continue to work with our elected members to carry out our roles as the planning authorities in as efficient and positive a mindset as possible, and we will continue to engage with all stakeholders to deliver on plan-led sustainable development to the benefit of all.

Mr. Pat Fitzpatrick

I am a councillor from Kilkenny and my colleague, from County Meath, is Councillor Nick Killian. I thank the Cathaoirleach, Deputy Matthews, the Leas-Chathaoirleach, Deputy McAuliffe, and the other members of the committee, for affording the AILG the opportunity to express its reaction to the draft planning and development Bill 2022, however briefly. I am introducing this presentation in my capacity as president of the AILG, which represents the 949 councillors across all parties and none in the 31 planning authorities throughout this State. Although present in the role of president of the AILG, I should also note that I am the current cathaoirleach of Kilkenny County Council.

Analysing this Bill with its 738 pages is a mammoth undertaking. We feel that not enough time is being allowed to scrutinise a Bill which will set the legal basis for the planning framework for decades to come. We ask whether it is good practice to hurry this extensive Bill through the Oireachtas, given its implications for future generations. It should not be necessary to remind all at this hearing that we, as councillors, are the citizens’ representatives in the entire planning process. It is important to reiterate that it is the councillors who ultimately make the development plan through being empowered with reserved functions which are, in effect, strategic decisions that can be made only by the elected members.

While there are some good features in this Bill, not least in its objective to consolidate the patchwork of planning laws that has evolved over recent years, there are also some overarching issues which, in the view of many of our members, will work to unnecessarily restrict the councillors’ primacy in the development plan process. Local democracy is the bedrock of our civic culture. If the Oireachtas diminishes the role of the councillor in a matter as relevant to local communities as planning, it will diminish Irish democracy as a whole. Our members, councillors from all parts of the country, have expressed concern that the Bill reinforces a centralised planning structure with the county development plan locked into rigid national and regional planning frameworks. These are based on assumptions and projections which may bear no reality to the conditions in particular localities as identified by councillors in their day-to-day role of representing citizens. The reinforcement of the oversight of the Office of the Planning Regulator further limits the discretion councillors have in shaping their locality based on their realistic local knowledge of its needs and capacities.

There is one tangible and immediate demonstration that the Oireachtas could make to show that it values the place of councillors in our democracy. In December last, there was a late amendment to the Planning and Development and Foreshore (Amendment) Act 2022 which removed the power of councillors to decide on their council housing developments for housing, or Part 8 as the power is generally known. This means that councillors cannot decide to approve, amend or decline a proposal put forward by the council management. It leads to the bizarre situation that although a project is being done in a council’s name, the councillors who are the board of that council have no say in how it is progressed. The offending provision is section 14 of the Planning and Development and Foreshore (Amendment) Act 2022. If the Oireachtas was truly to value our role as councillors, it would introduce a wording at section 142 of the Bill to delete this provision in the 2022 Act and restore with immediate effect the capacity for councillors to decide on their council’s housing developments.

I reiterate what our chairperson said. We thank the committee for the invitation to address the serious issues arising from the publication of this draft Bill. LAMA is the representative body of some 800 of the 949 councillors throughout the 31 local authorities.

Our concerns on this draft Bill are that without robust reviews being built in, the proposed tenure of future city and county development plans is far too long, at ten years. With an effective rolling ten-year plan, it is possible that councillors elected to a local authority may never get a chance to have any input to a plan. LAMA sees the merit of the longer period to coincide with national strategies like Project Ireland 2040.

Councillors need to be able initiate a proper review. All city and county development plans are passed in good faith, in that the interpretation of the written word reflects what councillors believed it meant on the day they passed the plan. Plans, along with a robust review, should be scheduled for mid-term in any council term. This would allay fears that the review could become an election issue, which could lead to poor decisions.

The initiation of material contraventions to city and county development plans should be equally the gift of both the members and the executive. At present contraventions seem to come from the executive predominantly. To overcome overuse of the material contravention process, a two thirds majority would be recommended before the contravention is ratified to proceed.

The removal of any aspect of the reserved function of Part 8 planning from councillors must be opposed strongly. Last December, the Government introduced an amendment to the Planning and Development and Foreshore (Amendment) Act 2022 that removed councillors' power to approve planning on council-owned lands. This was akin to the strategic housing developments, SHDs, and other attempts at taking away power to decide at local level. We in LAMA ask our national legislators to desist from these ill-thought-out solutions to issues that are not of the making of local authority members. Local decisions at local level in the interest of subsidiarity, within prompt timelines, are the most efficient way of effecting timely solutions.

Adequate resourcing of local authorities and An Bord Pleanála is crucial in making planning work efficiently in this country. All the fanfare around direct planning routes to An Bord Pleanála has done little to expedite decisions. First, the board was totally under-resourced for the extra workload, which has led to huge backlogs, with approximately 70,000 homes still awaiting a decision. We welcome statutory timelines similar to those at local authority level. People may not be happy with a local authority decision but at least they will get one within the timeframe laid out. If An Bord Pleanála fails to meet timelines, it should face sanction.

The format for taking judicial reviews should have some filtering process in terms of how such reviews get to court in the first place. It must be determined whether the review is vexatious - are those taking the review doing so for the common good or is it just plain nimbyism? There is a line where local democracy can find itself quasi-supplanted by another arm of the State. The ability of someone from outside the jurisdiction or from long distances within the country to object to planning needs review. In some cities in Europe, objectors have to be within a certain radius, for example, 100 km, to have a valid objection. LAMA does not have specific solutions for this as it is predominantly for the legal eagles to decide but we would urge our national legislators to use all at their disposal to review this in the context of the Bill.

Finally, we ask that in conjunction with this Bill, the publication of the rural housing guidelines would happen forthwith as councillors, while making decisions, are unclear as to what national legislators want. We thank committee members for their time and are happy to take questions.

Chairman

Thank you. I now invite Mr. Minton to make an opening statement on behalf of the regional assemblies.

Mr. David Minton

We are grateful for the invitation to participate in today's meeting.

Internationally, the discourse on regional development has evolved rapidly, recognising that successful economies are organised on a regional basis. The regional assemblies represent the regional tier of government in Ireland and play a central role in the new planning system. This role is largely enabled through regional spatial and economic planning.

We acknowledge the prominence of regional planning in the draft legislation and the new responsibilities under consideration. This is a confident signalling for regional planning and each of the regional assemblies and reflects the impact of the regional tier within the Irish planning system and the positive statutory alignment that now exists between the national, regional and local planning.

The assemblies welcome the opportunity to input to the legislative process and acknowledge the invitation by the committee and the chairperson today, as well as the invitation by the Minister to actively participate in the planning advisory forum over the past 12 to 18 months. In the context of today, our comments are limited to high-level observations and a more detailed submission will follow.

We have four salient or primary points to make. The assemblies welcome the continued focus on plan-led development. At national level, the draft Bill at section 18 (1) is a highly positive signalling for the role of the regions. We also welcome the prescribed role set out for the assemblies in the national planning framework review. Section 28 further enhances and embeds the importance of the regional spatial and economic plans in the planning hierarchy and we welcome this strengthened responsibility. In particular, it expands on land use and transport planning integration, with a strengthened alignment of the National Transport Authority, NTA, with regional policy which is substantially positive. There are also additional welcome responsibilities in the areas of housing, climate action, renewable energy strategies, marine spatial planning and coastal management. Again, this reflects the move to mirror more regionally organised land use planning.

The overarching concern of the regional assemblies is that any review of the Bill should safeguard and strengthen the strategic regional planning content of the planning of national policy. In addition, we have some observations on areas of the Bill that we feel require further consideration. First, the regional assemblies strongly welcome the reference to metropolitan area strategic plans, MASPs, in section 28. Given the strategic importance of the MASPs, the review of the Bill should ensure they are an effective mechanism for the delivery of transformative change required under the national planning framework, NPF. We note that the relevant content is light by contrast to other plans and strategies in the Bill, like the guidance included for urban area plans, and believe that greater emphasis should be given to the MASPs in the legislation. Subsections (4) and (5) refer to the designation of boundaries for each MASP by the regional assemblies and provide that this means the area consisting of the city and its surrounding area, approximating to the extent of its commuting zone. Any designation or re-designation of existing MASP boundaries should require clear and strict rationale not necessarily limited to commuting zones. Safeguards should be included to ensure that consistent criteria are used for identification of all MASP areas.

On the cross-boundary joint area plans, the regional assemblies welcome the inclusion of the definition of a principal planning authority in section 13. Section 28(12) clarifies how a principal planning authority shall be determined by the regional assemblies. Furthermore, the provisions regarding joint area plans in sections 70, 71, and 73 to 75, inclusive, are welcome. However, there are instances where a joint area plan will cross the boundaries of more than one planning area. Athlone, for example, is located within the administrative areas of counties Westmeath and Roscommon and across the eastern and midland region and the northern and western region. The regional assemblies would welcome a definition of a "principal regional assembly" and the criteria of the determination of a principal regional assembly, particularly where a joint area plan is being prepared.

The third area, which is critical, is implementation and delivery. The role of public bodies in reporting on regional implementation has been removed from the draft Bill. Section 25(A)(2) of the current Planning Act requires the regional assembly to prepare a report monitoring progress made in implementing the regional spatial and economic strategy every two years. The monitoring report specifies the progress made in securing the overall objectives of the regional spatial and economic strategy, including actions specific to the public bodies. This relies on the co-operation of public bodies such as Irish Water, Enterprise Ireland and Fáilte Ireland. Section 34 extends the reporting cycle to a four-year implementation report. The assemblies consider that this period is too long and should remain at two years. We also hold that the existing requirement for public bodies to report on specific actions regionally should be maintained.

On governance, section 30(4)(b) states that when notified by the assembly of the intention to review or make a regional spatial and economic strategy, local authorities shall co-operate, especially for the establishment of committees to oversee and consider the preparation of the strategy or its revision. Section 30(4)(d) states that the role of these committees will include considering observations received, including under section 31, preparation of the draft or draft revision. The introduction of the two sections is a retrograde step. It erodes the reserved function of the assembly members and introduces a risk to the process, given that many of the submissions will come from the local authority sector itself. The preferred option is continued co-operation with local authorities through the use of technical working groups to assist and provide content to prepare the regional spatial and economic strategy.

As indicated, the regional assemblies have prepared detailed comments to assist the legislative review process and will formally submit these to the committee and the Minister. Finally, we would like to highlight one concern relating to the limited references to regional development within the Bill. This is at odds with the NPF and a number of national strategic outcomes. Our assessment indicates that there are only two references to regional development. That said, we congratulate the drafting team and the Minister for bringing forward such progressive legislation. We also thank the committee for the invitation to participate in this meeting.

Chairman

I thank Mr. Minton. To clarify, the three regional assemblies are represented today. I mentioned the Northern and Western Regional Assembly in my opening address but members of all three assemblies are here, which is great.

Deputy Paul McAuliffe

I thank my colleague, Senator Fitzpatrick, for allowing me to take the first slot. Before I launch into the planning side, I am very conscious that when we are not talking about planning or heritage at this committee, we are dealing with housing legislation. In the past three years, we passed a huge volume of housing legislation that, in the main, falls on local authorities and local authority members, as does the complexity of all those schemes. I encourage local authorities to keep delivering on housing. I appreciate the work they do, especially local councillors and local council officials. It is all very well passing legislation but a project only gets off the ground when a council starts to take it up. We have seen from the Housing for All review that some local authorities are doing very well on social and affordable housing, while others may not be doing so well on cost rental. It is different for different areas. I ask local authority members to hold their officials to account because there are plenty of tools now. The toolbox for building houses is full. Everything they can do to put pressure, not that they need it, on their officials is more than welcome.

The Bill is mammoth legislation for us. I cannot imagine how local authority members will have the resources or time to dedicate to it. I acknowledge the fact they are putting themselves forward to represent 31 local authority members. It is a massive task. I will focus on a couple of areas that might be of particular interest. Councillor Fitzpatrick spoke about the ten-year plan. Will he talk to us a little about his concerns regarding it? The Department indicated there will be a review but it seems it will not be possible for councillors to bring forward amendments during that review stage. I am worried about that. We have all seen reviews to the corporate plan, for example, just sit on the shelf and do not make a difference. Will Councillor Fitzpatrick talk to us a little about his concerns around the ten years?

Mr. Pat Fitzpatrick

I thank the Deputy. Many of our members have real concerns regarding the ten-year plan. We represent the citizen and this plan is moving further away from the citizen. We believe that very strongly. We are elected as councillors every five years but, as far as the public is concerned, everything in the Bill seems to be moving away from local authority members and citizens. We feel very strongly that citizens will not be able to get in at this as much and it will be drawn out for longer and longer. I make the strong case that we believe the plan should be for five years. We need protection. The reviews that come need to make sure there is public consultation and that the citizen - as I said, we represent the citizen - has much more access and input.

Deputy Paul McAuliffe

Councillor Shannon will have seen the development of local area plans, LAPs, and all the effort that goes into development plans. Sometimes, very little happens during an LAP. There are some changes to the substructures underneath. Does Councillor Shannon have any comment on that or on the ten years?

Mr. Terry Shannon

The development plan is the local authority members' plan. That seems to get lost in the debate. It is not the executive plan or, indeed, the public's plan, although we should reflect the public's aspirations. At the end of the day, it is the members' plan and it is their responsibility to implement it, whether it is a LAP or the city or county development plan. That gets lost in the debate. Some members, and we have to put our hands up on this, get more involved in it than others. We accept that. At the end of the day, however, in order to be open and transparent members must have a say and must be involved at all levels. When we look at the number of material contraventions that come to us fairly quickly following a development plan, that proves plans have to be organic. The very idea that somebody elected to a local authority has no say except through a review, and even at that is not able to make amendments, is undemocratic.

There seems to be a rolling centralisation, not just in this instance but right across much of local government. I often wonder why we have high-paid executive members and people at regional assembly level, in addition to departmental people. If the Department wants to centralise everything, we will all walk off and go home. We have other things to be doing. However, that is not what the public wants and it is not what democracy is about.

Deputy Paul McAuliffe

It also would not be in line with the decision the Government made to reverse the strategic housing development, SHD, process, which took that power away.

Councillor Shannon made a point about the plan being the members' plan. As a local authority member, I was always very conscious that often my only source of information was officials. If the officials did not want to do something, I often had nowhere else to go. Does Councillor Anglim accept that councillors need more support during the development plan phase and perhaps even access to some independent advice and support? Often, legal action is threatened against members. Councillors are often very exposed during the development plan process.

Mr. Micheál Anglim

I agree with the Deputy. We are always told when the county development plan comes before us in the council chamber that it is our plan. It is the councillors in that chamber that pass it. To go back to the ten-year plan, ten years is too long. Not only could there be an elected councillor who would never have had input to a county development plan, it could go the same way for a chief executive. A chief executive could be in that job for seven to ten years, yet that person could go through without having had input to a plan either. Five years would be more in line. As Councillor Shannon outlined, if it was to go to ten years, there would have to be rigorous reviews during that period.

Deputy Paul McAuliffe

I will allow Councillor Killian to come in on that point.

Mr. Nick Killian

As we have said clearly from the beginning, this is open to change. It is no way the final document. Even so, Councillor Killian is correct. It is a daunting task to read 738 pages and compare it with the consolidated Act, and I think we have all struggled with that part of it.

Deputy Emer Higgins

I thank the witnesses for attending and for sharing their expertise. It has been especially interesting to hear from the councillor representatives, given they represent almost 1,000 councillors, who cannot afford to take out the time to read this lengthy draft Bill. I thank them, therefore, for coming and putting their views on record.

A friend of mine was recently a member of the Dublin Citizens' Assembly, which related to proposals for a Dublin mayor. His major takeaway was that, having absorbed all the information presented to them, the powers of local councillors in Ireland are diminished when compared with those in local democracy systems elsewhere in the world. That is regrettable. Development plans are an example of this. I was a councillor for a decade and worked on two county development plans, and I did that in an era before the Office of the Planning Regulator. While that is a fantastic office that acts as a watchdog to ensure correct decisions in respect of zoning are being made, it has diminished councillors’ powers when it comes to making the final determination over what the development plan for the area and people they represent will look like.

I am interested to hear the witnesses' views on development plans. I am open to there being a tenure of ten years and I think that would make for good planning because there would at least be a timeframe in which development is more likely to happen. When development plans came back to me after six years, there was still residential zoning where they might have been a live planning application but nothing had happened. What concerns me are the points Councillors Shanahan and Killian made regarding that review having teeth and the need for material contraventions or amendments to be able to be initiated from elected members as well as the chief executive. Councillor Shanahan put it well when he said these are councillors' development plans and not those of the executives. What changes would we need to make in the Bill to satisfy those requirements?

Deputy McAuliffe spoke about the pressures on councillors when it comes to development plan decisions. What was the experience during any decisions that have been made online? Did the online dynamic have an impact on decision-making?

Councillor Fitzpatrick from AILG spoke about the rigid national and planning frameworks and that fed somewhat into what our guests from the CCMA said about the planning hierarchy. What do we need to do to make those frameworks more flexible, from a councillor's perspective, and to make the hierarchy clearer, from the CCMA's perspective?

On the joint area plans, I fully agree with what was said. This applies in my county with the City Edge project, where boundaries have to be crossed, so it makes sense. That the taking in charge process is being included in that is positive and I hope it will speed up matters. From the perspective of rural guidelines, that is something I am interested in. I am a Dublin Deputy but I represent a rural area too, so I will pass that feedback on to the Minister.

Most of all, I would like to hear feedback from our guests from AILG and LAMA regarding development plans. How should they work, what should be the duration and how could the review mechanism be built in to make them more councillor friendly? How can we ensure the decision-making can initiate from members as well as executives?

Mr. Nick Killian

One point that came clearly through the planning advisory forum related to the lack of understanding among a lot of national bodies in regard to the role of the councillor. In fact, at one meeting, I raised the fact that at the end of the day, we are responsible for the county development plan, but that was not fully understood by everybody. Indeed, the roles of the CCMA or the manager in the county development plan were not fully understood. For example, many of us in this room are councillors, and we have all gone through the development plan process over recent years. We were dealing with census figures back to 2016, yet we were making decisions on figures that were given to us.

Whatever becomes of this Bill, it has to be relevant when a plan is being made, and that is why I am so concerned about the idea of a five-year review. Who would have foreseen this time last year all the life changes, planning changes and housing needs changes that have happened? We are all concerned about the housing crisis, the lack of development and the lack of provision of housing but, please God, within the next five years, that will have abated insofar as it can. We need relevant information.

One of our other concerns is that we feel there is a planning regulation overreach when it comes to development plans. There is concern among our members about the overreach, not least by the OPR in regard to the decisions we make at local level because we know our areas. One point that has not been mentioned is that rural Ireland is out there. It is not all about urban Ireland but also about rural Ireland and the effects of that development plan on, say, the small clochán in Donegal or the node in a small village.

Deputy Emer Higgins

I apologise for interrupting but I am conscious of the time. I might bring in Councillor Sheahan and return to Councillor Killian later.

Mr. Nick Killian

The OPR is a concern for us at present.

Mr. John Sheahan

To come more into line with the timeframes at national level, the ten-year timeframe might be the ideal. With anything shorter than that, we would run into commencing the review after five or six years, given it takes a year to get into and a year to get out of, which is a long time.

The Deputy asked how we found the new way of doing business remotely. Personally, I found it to be a disaster because we did not have our colleagues in one room. If we wanted a breakout meeting in respect of any aspect of the plan, we could not get our colleagues together. This was on a cross-party basis, and I am not talking about individual parties or anything like that. Believe it or not, councillors work together in these situations to get the job done and all parties, bar none, get involved.

We recently produced the first-ever Limerick city and county development plan and it was rolled over for eight or nine years since the previous plan because of the amalgamation and so on. Everything did not fall apart just because there was not a city and county development plan immediately after the amalgamation, and now it is far more cohesive. We are going through the teeth of it to see where any hiccups are because we already have a material contravention on substandard roads, within less than 12 months of passing the plan. Much of it was carried out online and I found that difficult because we need our colleagues with us in the room to discuss the issues.

I urge whoever in a ministerial capacity might be listening to this meeting to consider a review of that legislation. Members might recall that legislation was brought in as a kneejerk reaction to Covid and it contained no sunset clause. It needs to be tweaked to ensure a higher percentage of attendance at councillor meetings overall, but especially in the case of the likes of budgets and development plans. That has been my experience of it.

Deputy Emer Higgins

It is interesting to get that feedback. As I said, I worked on a couple of development plans, and I could not imagine having had to stay up until 2 a.m. looking into a computer screen and zooming in and out of maps. I know I would have found it unworkable, so it was interesting to hear Councillor Sheahan's experience.

Mr. Micheál Anglim

To follow on from what Councillor Sheahan said, Tipperary County Council was in a similar position, even though it was when the north and the south of the county were joined. The county development plan we passed recently was the first in which I have been involved, and I have been a councillor since 2013. It too was rolled over. I agree with Councillor Killian that ten years is a long period, and I say that as a rural councillor. If someone makes a mistake and does not admit it, the council will be doubling down on it, and a mistake was made in the county development plan for Tipperary, in my opinion, as I argued in the chamber on a number of occasions. For rural housing, it is very important, as it is in Dublin and other cities. In the case of people living in rural areas, no one believes houses can be built everywhere - they cannot be - but it has to be done fairly.

Previously, it was not done fairly in our case, but it is now a bit fairer as a result of the county development plan we passed. If an error was made, ten years is too long without having another go at it. As was stated, if it was to go to ten years, there would have to be strong terms in it regarding reviews at different stages.

Chairman

I am in two minds on the ten-year plan. In a way, it is good to have a long look at the county development plan, which is the overarching plan for the county, and then to fill in the details with priority area plans, urban area plans and joint area plans, or local area plans as they were previously known. I remember being completely overwhelmed by a development plan process. It is really tough. If a councillor is interested in planning and committed to the development plan, it is a tough process through which to go, as all present are aware. I am in two minds in that regard.

As regards the overreach of the planning regulator, the regulator will review what councillors put into a plan. It is often the case that councillors will vote an objective or something else into a plan against the advice of the planner, the chief executive, TII, the NTA or whoever it may be. The planning regulator will consider that and come back and issue recommendations. That is a good oversight role to have because although it is the councillors' plan, there are rules and guidelines within which they must stay. If councillors took the approach that it is their plan and they could put whatever they want into it, planning would go off the rails completely. It is good to have the OPR oversight of those plans.

Mr. John Sheahan

I refer to the minutiae of the oversight of the OPR in respect of the first couple of test plans that went to it. I will take the example of County Wexford. Its plan was far more advanced than other plans at the time that the regulator's office was put in place. In terms of the minutiae of the report on Wexford's first draft plan, the OPR nearly went down every road and cul-de-sac in County Wexford to see if there was an issue in respect of the planning. The process moved on and, by the time we got to our plan, the OPR had started to take more of an overarching look at the plans rather than going through the minutiae of them. Going forward, it is good to have a regulator and we all know the history of planning in Ireland in the past 30 years but too far east can be west as well. I hope that is going to level itself out.

Mr. Nick Killian

County Meath, where I am a councillor, was one of the first counties to go through the process with the OPR. We did our development plan with the OPR at various training sessions the AILG provides across the country. I recall saying to regulator that the planners themselves were fearful of the OPR. It was like there was a sword of Damocles hanging over the planners to get this right. There was serious caution there. My colleagues in the CCMA may not agree in that regard but there was a fear factor among planners. It is not that they were being unprofessional or not doing their jobs but the OPR came into the conversation so much that we began to fear the man himself, whom, as a former planner in County Meath, we knew.

Chairman

I get the points being made and take them sincerely. I have a certain amount of experience of development plans. I was outraged when certain things were voted through. I was then depending on the OPR to come in with a sword and state that certain parts of the plan were not on. There are two sides to it.

The regional assemblies currently carry out a two-year monitoring in respect of the eastern and midlands, northern and western and southern plans. The proposal is to extend that to four years. I agree with the assembly on keeping the monitoring at two years. Is the monitoring of the three regional plans carried out at the same time so that they can feed into whether the NPF objectives are being met? Is that how they are done at the moment?

Mr. David Minton

Under the legislation, each of the regional assemblies in the current period adopted their regional plans in 2020 and published their implementation reports in late 2022. They all ran concurrently. That gives us an opportunity to contrast the performance of the regions intra-regionally but also comparatively across the three regions and against other EU regions. It is critical that we retain the commitment of public bodies to delivering on a regional level. It is important that it is not just the regional assemblies presenting on the performance of the regional assemblies but actually the commitments of the NPF at a regional level by all the State agencies. That is critically important.

Chairman

I was on the Eastern and Midland Regional Assembly for a while in 2020 before I was elected to the Dáil. We had just passed the regional, spatial and economic strategy, RSES, for the eastern and midland region. We are now into the third year of that strategy. There is a monitoring report on the three RSESs at the moment. Do they go to the Minister separately to be put together?

Mr. David Minton

No. They are for each assembly to adopt as their implementation reports and then issued to the Minister on the performance of it.

Mr. David Kelly

It goes to the Minister indirectly. It first goes to the National Oversight and Audit Commission, NOAC, which is meant to review the reports and make recommendations to the Minister. Under the draft Bill, that will change. It will go to the OPR, which will assess reports and then make recommendations to the Minister to support the implementation of the regional strategies.

Chairman

Is it too early at this stage in the review of the three plans that have been done to assess whether the targets of the NPF are being met in respect of balanced regional development?

Mr. David Kelly

It is. I will let Ms Bannon and Mr. Minton speak on behalf of their reports. We have seen a couple of things in the process of doing the monitoring report. The first is that our strategies are currently 12-year strategies and it is difficult to see massive impact in the first two years of a long-term strategy. We are seeing a change in terms of turning the ship in the right direction, if one likes. That is critically important. Second, the key point we are making relates to public bodies and Departments and alignment with their spending in line with the objectives of the NPF and the RSESs. If that piece is removed from the monitoring going forward, there will be a void in terms of seeing how national government and Departments are supporting the delivery through their investment strategies, as well as seeing whether local authorities are delivering.

Ms Clare Bannon

As to whether it is too early to see if the NPF is working, the RSES is very much dependent on what is rolled out at local level through county development plans. They are a key implementation piece for us in the jigsaw of implementing the RSES. Many of them have only been adopted in the past year or two, so it is still too early to see the results of that policy being implemented on the ground. There are early signs, however, that we are starting to see a shift change in the policy that we initiated in the RSES and the NPF.

I echo what Mr. Kelly and Mr. Minton stated in respect of the fact that the Bill would remove the obligation of public bodies to feed into the RSESs in the monitoring report under sections 22A and 25A of the current Act. Both of the provisions relating to public bodies have been removed. Although we, as regional assemblies, understand that obligation might place a significant onus on public bodies to feed in to us, we believe it would be a retrograde step to remove that obligation. It would be like going back to pre-NPF times, to the national spatial strategy, which was widely criticised as being inconsistent and that people were not singing off the same hymn sheet. It is important for those two provisions in the Act to be reinstated.

Senator Victor Boyhan

I welcome all the groups and their teams. I know many of the witnesses and they are all very welcome. I acknowledge the presence of Liam Kenny and Tommy Moylan, who are executive directors of the AILG.

I will start with the CCMA and direct my first question to Ms Henchy, who I am familiar with as she was the director of planning in the local authority I represented for many years. I put three county development through my hands. I have them all on my desk. I took them out today. Some date back to the 1980s. They include many volumes and appendices. They are now on disks. I did not receive this one. I requested it, but I do not have the written statement and maps for this one. Perhaps they are on the way or perhaps they are on disks. I do not know.

The CCMA presentation today was excellent. I do not support all of the issues raised in it but it was well laid out and I acknowledge that. References to ongoing work and work the CCMA will be undertaking were peppered throughout the preamble of its commentary and conclusion, and it will be making that available to the Department. Will the CCMA give a commitment to the committee that once it completes that work, it will send a copy of it to the committee, because we are also involved in this work? I will roll back slightly to add some context. What are we doing today? This meeting is carrying out pre-legislative scrutiny or hearings prior to a process taking place. There is a long way to go. I know the timeframe and accept the times are too short. I will ask the CCMA some questions and then I will come back to the other representative bodies. Will the CCMA confirm, without any detail, whether it is in a position and prepared to make its full comprehensive submission to the Department available to the committee? Will it also touch on an issue reported in The Irish Times and the Irish Examiner this morning, namely, the critical need for resources around this legislation. While it is not in the legislation per se, we must be mindful of the enormous needs of the planning authority and its support structures. That is important.

The ten year plan is far too long. Ms Henchy concluded a county development plan last year. I am not picking on her, I just happen to know her. She has already initiated, started or commenced a variation No. 1 to her plan. That tells us how fast things move. That is not a criticism. I understand it is a process. We currently have the five and six-year plans. What is the idea behind the seven-year plan? What does the CCMA think of it? It would be a grave injustice that a person who was elected to a local authority for ten years might never touch a county development plan. That could happen and it is not right. There is a lot of learning in a development plan, but, more important, there is a lot of local knowledge. Councillors have lived in these communities for years. They eat, drink and sleep the issues of these communities and know personally about these communities and their needs. It is important they are at the centre of the process. Will the CCMA speak about the new mid-term seven-year development plan and the association's thoughts on it?

Ms Mary Henchy

On the issue of the ten-year plan, the sector is strongly of the opinion that to push it out from six years would be extremely advantageous for the delivery of the plan. Six years is a short timeline. We are not doing a variation of the plan at the moment, but moving forward local area plans that are included in the development plan. That is really to the point. We prepared our development plan and it was passed by the members last March. We are still going through judicial review of a number of matters in the plan. That is taking up a significant amount of resources. Our forward planning team is also working on active land management, residential zoned land tax, RZLT, and other pieces of work while balancing bringing forward three local area plans. If a six-year plan were in place, we would only have the guts of three years to deliver the aspirations of the plan and then we would be back into the job of preparing and delivering the next plan. The Act states we have two years to deliver it, but really, to be ready to advise councillors, members and so on, we have to look a year out from that. We are then looking at a confined timetable of two and a half years to work on delivering a huge document in which members invest significantly. I concur with everything that was said here. The development plan is the contract with the people but we need time to deliver it and to bed it in. The nature of planning is that it is looking ahead. I would not be nervous about the idea of a ten-year plan. I would welcome it with the possibility to review.

Senator Victor Boyhan

I will stay with the CCMA for this round of questions. Ms Henchy spoke about a robust review. The whole thing is currently a bit meaningless. It involves the executive ticking boxes. I do not mean to be insulting, but that is the reality for many councillors who tell me there is no real engagement. That is how I felt about the reviews when I was in the local authority. Things have moved on considerably since then. In a short sentence, does Ms Henchy believe in a robust mid-term review?

Ms Mary Henchy

I can only speak from my experience of the process. It is beginning to sound a little like a them and us. It is in the interest of a local authority to see good development in its areas as much as it is in the interest of the members. The review of a plan should be as robust as it needs to be at that time. If the plan is working, then it is working. However, if issues have arisen, it is the opportunity to look at it.

Senator Victor Boyhan

I will address the last minute of my time to Mr. Kelly on the issue of the national planning statements. They are powerful and central to the Bill. The Minister will have all this discretion and all these powers. Ultimately, we can say what we like, but according to section 23 in chapter 3 the Minister can bring in national planning statements. He must bring them to Cabinet for approval - it does not matter what anyone else thinks - and then they must be laid before the Houses of the Oireachtas, which is another meaningless exercise. What is the considered view of the CCMA of the national planning statements?

Mr. Kevin Kelly

Under current policy there are provisions for policy directions to be received from a national level. It is important that, at any time we do our plans and go through the process, it should take something substantial for a change to be made under a national planning statement. We would like to see a scenario where, having gone through the rigours of a development plan overseen by the Office of the Planning Regulator, OPR, everyone accepts the plan to be fully in accordance with national policy and that all decisions must be made in accordance with it. It should only be changed later by national planning statements in limited circumstances. One of the things we need to ensure in our planning system is the issue of certainty. At the moment there is a lack of it because people are wondering what is happening at regional and national level and where the development plan sits. Many practitioners and members feel that little regard is now being paid to the development plan. People are looking elsewhere for the policy. We would like to see a scenario where we go through the process, the plan is checked and that is the decision-making at local level and in the commission in due course. That would then only be changed if at a point in time national planning statements are issued. Only the development plan and any new national planning statement on a substantial issue should become the basis for decision-making.

Deputy Eoin Ó Broin

I thank the witnesses for the opening statements. I share many of the views and support many of the issues raised in the opening statements. The debate that took place after them about the OPR and who is responsible for the centralisation of the planning system is important, but it misses the point in a sense because, whether or not one likes the individual communications from the OPR, national Government policy is at stake. The OPR polices that and, ultimately, if there is a ministerial direction, it is a ministerial direction, albeit on foot of the OPR. This is relevant to my questions about the Bill. We have had a number of years where the policymaking role of the local authority, both the executive and the elected members, has been progressively restricted.

I recently came out of a development plan review and it is probably the most restrictive development plan review we have had. That is the view of many of the elected members in south Dublin as well as of the executive. It is a result of the mandatory ministerial guidelines introduced by Deputy Alan Kelly in the Planning and Development Act 2016, the statutory nature of the national planning framework and the special planning policy requirements introduced by former Deputy Eoghan Murphy and others in 2018 and 2019. We can agree or disagree with those measures, but they have increasingly narrowed the room for local authorities to be policymakers. Increasingly, they are policy takers, whether or not one thinks that is a good thing.

My questions on two sections of the Bill relate to that. Almost all of the witnesses, whether very diplomatically by the CCMA or more directly by the elected members, have expressed concern about the centralising trend in aspects of the Bill. I want to tease that out. With respect to the County and City Management Association, I am particularly concerned, not so much by the so-called national planning policy statements but the series of provisions in the Bill that allow for the expedited retrospective working of those statements into the plans. There will be a ten-year plan but, depending on who the Minister is and what Cabinet approval the Minister gets, sections 28, 62 and 120 allow for much more rapid change in the development plan without the same involvement of elected members. Is there a concern that, notwithstanding the fact that we need certainty and policy alignment, we might just be creating all sorts of other conflicts between that planning policy statement and the ten-year development plan? We could have the kind of situation we have seen in Cork county and Dublin city where legal challenges have been taken by local authorities to decisions because there are conflicts. I am trying to work out whether we are creating a new set of conflicts with these sections.

I will come back in the next round.

Senator John Cummins

Yes. On a related point, I believe the new section 257 corresponds with the old section 57. We do not have the corresponding Act here. Under this section, people can make a written request to a local authority to carry out works on a protected structure. It is essentially for a declaration that the works are exempt. A decision has to be made on that within a period of 12 weeks. If, as the owner of such a property, I believed the works would not materially affect the structure and I could do the work quickly, the advantage would be negated if the local authority were to take 12 weeks to make a decision on the application. At the end of the 12-week period, it could decide the building is not exempt and therefore the owner needs to apply for planning permission. The owner must then go into the planning process. Most owners decide to apply via the planning system, which clogs up local authority resources in that there is another planning application in the system that probably does not need to be there. I made this point to the officials when they attended the committee for the first session. In order for this provision to be of advantage in speeding up the process, the 12-week timeframe needs to be looked at. From a practical perspective, in what timeframe could a local authority make a decision on whether to make a declaration under this section? I am not making light of the process but surely a quicker timeframe is needed to make it advantageous to take this route given that the works are not of a significant nature and will not materially alter the building.

I accept that point. However, if we want to try to speed things up and not clog up the planning system with an additional workload, we need to think outside the box about how to speed up other elements of the process.

I will move to the representatives of the assemblies. In his opening statement, Mr. Minton cited an issue with the extent of the commuting zone in the MASP. Could our guests elaborate on that issue?

Ms Clare Bannon

Deputy Cian O'Callaghan

I thank everyone who came in for their opening statements. I wish to ask the CCMA representatives about the part in their statement about taking estates in charge. They talked about how this is included in the draft Bill and how this is welcome. Are there differences between what is in this draft Bill and what is in the existing legislation? If they could explain a bit about that, that would be great.

Mr. Kieran Kehoe

When the economic collapse happed in the late 2000s, I would have been heavily involved in developing much of the guidance around how unfinished estates were dealt with and the resolution of same. One of the anomalies – it is just the history – is that the taking in charge of estates is now done under the Roads Act, as we are all aware, and it is just about being declared a public road. We welcome the fact that this is now brought in to the primary planning legislation. It brings closure to the full circle of zoning the land appropriately, consent for the application being given by us or by the commission, the development happening, enforcing or not, and then being taken in charge. That cycle is important and we think it is completed under the Planning and Development Act. It will, of course necessitate further resources, going back to the previous comment. That need was not known at the time. There are a huge number of issues to be further examined, which we will be doing over the next while. We will consider how that will impact operationally and with regard to resources, including financial resources. In addition, there is the whole compensation piece, which similarly is welcomed, to be clarified with regard to taking in charge legacy estates that are not in the ownership of the local authority. We welcome the fact that we can now clear that anomaly up, if you want to call it that.

Deputy Cian O'Callaghan

I do not think that section of the Bill has timelines in it. Does it? Is the lack of timelines an issue or potentially a weakness in it? For example, I was talking to people on Saturday in an area of my constituency that was built 18 years ago and is not taken in charge. They are waiting 18 years to be taken in charge. As they are waiting, public areas are deteriorating. This potentially means that when they are taken in charge by the council, the expense to be incurred by the council will have increased due to the 18-year delay. One can understand their frustration but also the difficulty that is faced by the local authority. It goes on endlessly for years. Some of the children in the estate who were not born 18 years ago are now almost adults. It is a long period of time. Is there not a need for timelines to put a structure on that?

Mr. Kieran Kehoe

I think there are timelines referenced in it. There is a little bit of an anomaly with regard to whether it is five or seven years. That is one of the clarifications we will be putting through to the Department. Depending on which way it is read, it must be taken in charge within five or seven years, or at least the management company or residents can submit a plebiscite for a request to take it in charge. There is at least the intention to introduce timelines for the request for it be taken in charge. If there are enforcement issues, that muddies that water a little bit and needs to be clarified. The Deputy is right in that vein. However, there is at least the introduction of those timelines, as far as I am aware. The detailed submission will reflect that.

Deputy Cian O'Callaghan

Head 83 in section 2(g), which relates to conditions on planning permissions, is about requiring bonds and is connected to the issue of taking in charge. If it is not built to the standard it should, the local authority can have recourse to using the bond. An issue that frequently comes up when it gets to that situation is that local authorities will say there is insufficient money in the bonds to bring the area up to the standard to take it in charge. Is there something that needs to be done on the whole area of bonds? At one of our last meetings, the Construction Industry Federation, CIF, representatives said that they cannot even get bonds now, so they have to hand over cash, which is a higher cost and ultimately can lead to issues around housing affordability.

Does that need to be looked at or does something need to be done there?

Mr. Kevin Kelly

Much work has been done on that. We found at the time of the crash that there were bonds at low levels and bonds that had reached their expiry dates. A great deal of work has been done by the CCMA, and with the CIF and the Department. I expect there are higher levels of bonds in place now. There is an issue around getting open-ended bonds for developers, and that is where the cash piece comes into it. We did work a couple of years ago with all the partners with an interest in that in order to devise a time-limited bond with sufficient caveats built in to give local authorities the certainty that they would be put on notice and could call on a bond at an earlier stage in the process. Despite that work, I do not think they were taken up very much by the development sector. Following what happened, I think local authorities are hugely aware of the need to have sufficient bonding in place. That causes issues for developers in terms of getting their development in place but it is very important in protecting the public interest.

Deputy Cian O'Callaghan

Will Mr. Kelly provide the committee with more information on the work he has done in that area? That would be useful in terms of looking at this Bill.

Mr. Kevin Kelly

We certainly can and can circulate the agreed bond put in place at that time.

Mr. Terry Shannon

The Deputy is in the happy position of only having one housing estate that is 18 years-----

Deputy Cian O'Callaghan

I have several.

Mr. Terry Shannon

I have people who were newly married and who are now grandparents. We have been waiting 35 years for one estate in my ward in Cork city. There are a couple of issues. First, it should be a condition of planning that there is sufficient funding in a bond. From my experience, some local authority officials have been lax in chasing up the bonds and ensuring they are cashed in in a timely fashion when trouble is there because, as the Deputy said, you go looking for the bond and there is insufficient funding. It then falls on local authorities. The estate is not up to standard, it takes resources and we do not have them. The piggy in the middle are the residents who come to local authority members. We are at the coalface. It should be a condition of planning that there is a bond, whether it is a cash bond or whatever.

We need to look at developers who walk away from unfinished estates and leave residents with unfinished roads and lighting, then go off to build somewhere else within the local authority. As part of the legislation, we should not give developers planning for a further development until they have finished or are seen to be finishing the estate they have. We have too much of that going on around the country. They move on and, as we all know with a builder, plumber or electrician in your house, once they are gone they are gone. It is like the ad on television. That is a problem but the local authority members are the piggy in the middle and have to deal with it. I would add those to the Deputy’s wish list.

Deputy Cian O'Callaghan

Head 156 relates to some of the issues about refusals of planning permission for past failure to comply but I understand it has never been used by a local authority and that has to be addressed.

Senator Mary Fitzpatrick

I thank the elected members and executives for attending, particularly the elected members. They have a job to do to get elected and look after their constituents but are here representing local authority members from all over the country. They are also cathaoirligh for their local authority areas and members of regional assemblies. The role of local authority members is not sufficiently recognised and valued. We appreciate their time, the work they do and their input into this legislation. It is enormous. They are not the only ones daunted by it. We have two months now of pre-legislative scrutiny but I know many of the witnesses already contributed to the 17 or 18 months that got the draft Bill to this stage. We would appreciate if they would make available to us the detailed submissions they will make available to the Department. They will be important and will be reflected in our report. Then there will be another round of consideration in Custom House and it will come back here and go through both Houses. We are a long way from the finish line and the inputs the witnesses make today and throughout this journey are incredibly valuable. I thank them for that and acknowledge it.

There has been much talk about the mandatory guidelines. However, there has also been much talk about the proposal for a ten-year plan. If one listens to all contributors for long enough, one gets persuaded by all arguments. The representatives from the CCMA are quite bold in saying that ten years is a good thing. I understand their reasoning. I was a local authority member and I am aware of the burden, at all levels, in terms of trying to complete a development plan and then trying to make it work, bring it to life and deliver on it. I am kind of falling to the mind that what we really need are good development plans owned by the elected members and officials for the people of the local authority area.

It is really critical that when a review is needed, the review process is meaningful and can be activated in a meaningful way. I do not expect the witnesses to be able to provide an answer right now, but it would be really useful for the committee to get a statement as to what, for them, would constitute a meaningful review process. If there was a really meaningful review process that could triggered effectively then to a certain extent, the timeline thing does not become as big an issue. It makes it more dynamic. Councillor Anglim said the development plan is a dynamic, living document. We do not live in a static world. Would that be something on which the witnesses could consider coming back to us?

Dr. John Sheehan

That is key to the whole thing. Let us not get too caught up with timeframes and dates because it will evolve within the timeframes. I am a little bemused that ten years might be seen as too long. It was only in September or October 2018 that the Oireachtas passed a 20-year plan for Project Ireland 2040. It had no difficulty doing that. I cannot understand why ten years seems to be anathema now. LAMA would say that the ten-year plan with robust reviews is welcome, and that was in our presentation today. When we say robust reviews, it means that the material contraventions can come from both sides of the establishment.

To follow on from Deputy Ó Broin's point regarding whether they are ministerial orders or instructions or whatever they are, I would say the carrot rather than the stick approach is best used by Ministers. Believe it or not - I do not know whether the Senator is aware of it - pound for pound, there are good councillors out there-----

Senator Mary Fitzpatrick

Absolutely.

Dr. John Sheehan

-----who roll up their sleeves every day, work hard and dig in, whether it is in the context of housing policy, environment policy or planning policy. There will be a couple of people who will come into council meetings with something on the back of a fag box and create mayhem, and there will be serial objectors to everything councils try to do, but we must put those people aside. There is a certain cohort in every local authority who take their duties and responsibilities to the nth degree every day. If members are looking at this planning Bill from a committee point of view, they should wear that set of glasses.

The regional assembly members and directors who are present have gone through the recess with sitting councillors and have found them to be very responsible in the context of what they are doing. I sit on the southern assembly with Mr. Kelly, and I know Mr. Minton and Mr. Jim Conway quite well. That is because we put ourselves out there to find out what the issues are and roll up our sleeves with regard to what the planning Acts do and so on. If I were to leave the Senator with one thought, it is that councillors do their jobs and do them well.

Senator Mary Fitzpatrick

Hear, hear.

Chairman

I thank Senator Fitzpatrick. I will move on now to Senator Boyhan for the second Independent slot.

Senator Victor Boyhan

I really want to focus on councillors this time. I started with the CCMA because all the questions were going to the councillors. I was beginning to wonder what the regional assembly and the CCMA were doing. When we look at the submissions, what process are we in? As I said, we are looking at pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Bill. We will take on board all the submissions and conversations here and feed into a process to come up with X number of recommendations. That report will be published and sent back to Government.

I took from the document that there was some concern from both local authority representative bodies. I certainly know from my extensive engagement with city and county councillors that there was much concern about the ten-year plan. I see a bit of consensus arising today. I am somewhat surprised but if that is the consensus, that is great. It looks like we are now seeing some sort of consensus to the ten years on the basis of this mid-term review. If that is the consensus among the CCMA, the AILG, and LAMA, then that is the easiest bit of work I have ever done or been involved with in local government. I take that on board. That is a positive coming out of these proceedings. If the Government and its officials are watching, which they certainly are, they will be quite excited by the idea because that was considered one of the major hurdles. In all our briefings, of course, we identify hurdles and receive much documentation. Before I move on, I acknowledge the Library and Research Service, which produced a digest in respect of the Planning and Development Bill. That briefing paper on this policy is really helpful. We can circulate the links to it.

I will perhaps start with Councillor Killian. Is that the consensus now? Does he think there is a consensus today to push it out for ten years or is there a more mid-term view of between five and ten years? He might tease that piece out for me.

Mr. Nick Killian

I thank Mr. Kelly. I will take that into account. As well as that, it states that within one or two years you start preparing urban area plans, priority plans and joint plans as well. It comes down to resources.

Senator Cummins raised the point about looking for a section 57 declaration and Mr. Kehoe stated that if it is not complex you would get it done within a couple of weeks and if it is more complex, it could take up to 12 weeks. That comes down to resources as well. If you had a lot of resources in your local authority - an architectural conservation officer, county architect and landscape planner - with all of those key roles you could probably make the decisions more quickly and you would have those kind of timeframes. Nobody will be too disappointed when he or she gets a decision more quickly than having to wait the full period of time. We understand that fully.

This was discussed with the board as well. Those 700 to 800 cases sitting in the board at present are due to a resources issue on having people to make those decisions.

I have a question on section 5 declarations. I asked the Department about this and it is now called section 8. Were they taking up a lot of time for planning authorities? I will ask the County and City Management Association about that.

Mr. Kieran Kehoe

It is like anything. It varies in relation the authority. In the more urban ones, there are a lot of section 5 declarations coming through. On enforcement, when a complaint is made it can be a mechanism of clarifying whether it is development or not. It is hard to say. It can vary based on location and based on the size of the authority.

Chairman

Was it raised? Did Mr. Kehoe raise with the Department in any of the advisory forums that section 5 declarations were becoming time consuming and difficult because I note section 8 now excludes a member of the public from taking a section 5?

Mr. Kieran Kehoe

It was not something that we would have raised with them.

Chairman

That is great. I thank Mr. Kehoe for that.

On public engagement, one of the key reasons we were doing this consolidated plan arose from one of the suggestions to take the conflict away from the application stage and put the conflict, if there was to be any, at the plan-making stage. That way everybody is aware when the plan is made that this is how their area will develop or what they are likely to be looking at. Does Mr. Kelly see anything in this plan as set out that will have much greater involvement in the plan-making process to try to address that challenge?

Mr. Kevin Kelly

I will make a general comment. One of my colleagues might have something additional to say.

One of the difficulties is getting engagement from the public in the making of plans. Under the current format, people do not engage in the pre-draft stage. Despite best efforts, the use of social media and the use of everything else, often it is only when a development is happening that people are almost aghast that there was a development plan and wonder how they did not know about it.

Just to follow up on that, the draft is to be published next month and it would be helpful if we had sight of the comments in that respect.

The planners in each of the local authority areas, who are engaging with the sector and know what is appropriate for their areas, are the best people to adjudicate on this. It would be helpful to have councillors' submission in that respect.

Deputy Eoin Ó Broin

I suspect if the planning officials in the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage had their way, the rural planning guidelines would have been published two years ago when they were first drafted. They have remained sitting on the desks of successive Ministers and Ministers of State. The real problem is that nobody wants to touch the hot potato. I fully support everybody who has said they need to be published because we need to have the debate and we need to get them signed. The same applies to the urban densities.

Regarding urban density, we should not confuse density with height. I absolutely agree with both the Senator and the councillors. It is possible to have very significant densities and everybody can have their own door onto the street. It is eminently possible and it is really important when the urban density guidelines are published that we separate out those things. It would be really helpful if our development plans set out the densities, almost like we set out zoning, but the topologies, what is then built to meet that density, are nice and flexible. If, for example, in the suburbs of Waterford, people do not want apartments and for viability reasons apartments are not the right option, a similar density can be achieved by having own-door developments. We have done it for decades here and internationally.

It is almost as if height is not the issue; the issue is density and topology and what is the most appropriate mechanism. Sometimes in an urban village, for example, it is possible to have really high density while respecting the traditional fabric of that village by building the right kinds of things. I hope when we get those density guidelines that is the debate we have. If we do, we will come up with solutions that we are all open to.

I wish to assure Councillor Sheahan of one thing. Neither this Oireachtas nor the previous one approved the national planning framework. It was one of the great scandals of the previous Oireachtas. Senator Boyhan and I fought a valiant losing battle. Despite the fact that the enabling legislation specified that the national planning framework should have the democratic imprimatur of the Oireachtas, we were denied that. There was no vote. Irrespective of one's view of the national planning framework - there are some bits I really like and some bits I do not like - for something that has such a profound impact on our planning system, citizens, elected representatives and executives, somebody somewhere should have voted for it. I emphasise that it was never voted on; it was a big battle in the last Oireachtas.

That leads me to my question. Between now and when we deal with this Bill on Committee Stage we should tease out with the witnesses what amendments we could table to increase opportunities for councillors to have some formal role. For example, if we consider the ministerial policy statements, not only is there no role for councillors but there is no role for the Oireachtas or this committee. That is an oversight. I and other members of the committee would be happy to work with councillors to see how we could insert a formal role for elected members and executives in that process. It would be helpful to hear any areas where elected members and councils should be involved in the decision-making process as outlined in the Bill.

I have a brief question for the CCMA. In December when, at the last minute, the Minister introduced the derogation for Part 8 - something nobody wanted or asked for but we got nonetheless - we were given the impression on the floor of the Dáil that it was voluntary. It was primarily for land aggregation scheme land involving debt write-downs by the Department and it would then be up to the managers to decide if they wanted to use it for other purposes. We are now hearing something very different and that there may now be a mandatory use of the Part 8 derogation throughout this year. Has the CCMA been involved in any conversations with the Department on that? I received a less-than-clear reply to a parliamentary question from the Minister last week. It seems that there will be an element of compulsion which was not what the Oireachtas was told when that amendment was introduced.

Mr. Kevin Kelly

We are awaiting clarification on the provisions that will be outlined.

Deputy Eoin Ó Broin

Does the CCMA have a view? I presume managers would prefer to have flexibility in whether they use that derogation over the short periods in place. I say that not being a fan of the derogation.

Mr. Kevin Kelly

At the end of the day, we have elected members to work with and we are interested in working with them.

Deputy Eoin Ó Broin

Mr. Kevin Kelly

That figure of 541 was the estimate for the local authority requirement only. We also have the requirement for planning staff in the Office of the Planning Regulator, An Bord Pleanála and the regional assemblies. If there are any student planners listening, there are plenty of opportunities in the future. As someone said, planning is not an exact science or formula where you know exactly what is going to come out the far end. It is our best attempt and at local authority level councillors work flat out, as Mr. Sheahan said, to represent the views of their constituents and to try to formulate plans. Essentially, planning applications that come out the far end of that represent what residents might expect of their area. There is a lot of work involved in it. I thank the witnesses for giving up their time and being with us today and I welcome those further submissions from them.

The joint committee adjourned at 5.55 p.m. until 9.30 a.m. on Thursday, 23 February 2023.

Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage debate - Tuesday, 21 Feb 2023

General Scheme of the Planning and Development Bill 2022: Discussion (Resumed)

Mr. Kevin Kelly

Mr. Pat Fitzpatrick

Mr. Nick Killian

Mr. Nick Killian

Mr. Nick Killian

Mr. Micheál Anglim

Mr. John Sheahan

Mr. David Minton

Mr. Pat Fitzpatrick

Mr. Terry Shannon

Mr. Micheál Anglim

Mr. Nick Killian

Mr. Nick Killian

Mr. Nick Killian

Mr. Nick Killian

Mr. Nick Killian

Mr. Nick Killian

Mr. John Sheahan

Mr. Micheál Anglim

Mr. John Sheahan

Mr. Nick Killian

Mr. David Minton

Mr. David Minton

Mr. David Kelly

Mr. David Kelly

Ms Clare Bannon

Ms Mary Henchy

Ms Mary Henchy

Mr. Kevin Kelly

Mr. Kevin Kelly

Mr. Kevin Kelly

Ms Mary Henchy

Ms Mary Henchy

Mr. John Sheahan

Mr. John Sheahan

Mr. John Sheahan

Mr. Kieran Kehoe

Mr. Kieran Kehoe

Mr. Kevin Kelly

Ms Clare Bannon

Ms Clare Bannon

Ms Clare Bannon

Ms Clare Bannon

Mr. Kevin Kelly

Mr. Kevin Kelly

Ms Mary Henchy

Ms Mary Henchy

Mr. Kevin Kelly

Mr. Kevin Kelly

Mr. Kevin Kelly

Mr. Kieran Kehoe

Mr. Kieran Kehoe

Mr. Kevin Kelly

Mr. Kevin Kelly

Mr. Terry Shannon

Mr. Terry Shannon

Mr. Terry Shannon

Mr. Terry Shannon

Mr. Pat Fitzpatrick

Dr. John Sheehan

Dr. John Sheehan

Mr. Nick Killian

Dr. John Sheehan

Dr. John Sheehan

Mr. John Sheahan

Ms Mary Henchy

Ms Mary Henchy

Mr. Kevin Kelly

Mr. Kieran Kehoe

Mr. Kieran Kehoe

Mr. Kevin Kelly

Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage debate -
Tuesday, 21 Feb 2023