Professor Mark Scott:

I thank the Deputy for the very interesting question. Our work is exploratory in nature at the moment. Phase 1 of the land use review focused on what our land is doing at the moment. We have now moved into addressing the question of what our land ought to do into the future. There are not many countries that are thinking about this in a very connected way. Land use policy tends to be quite fragmented in many jurisdictions across urban and rural areas or between agricultural or more urban focused policies.

When the EPA was dealing with phase 1, it identified 120 or more policy documents in Ireland that had a land use dimension, but we have never really co-ordinated those different policy dimensions. What we are trying to do is quite novel, not just in Ireland but also internationally.

There are some interesting policy debates happening. In respect of our neighbours in the UK, I understand Scotland is on the third iteration of a national land use framework, which is an overarching policy and something many government policies try to align with. England recently introduced ideas around biodiversity net gain in its planning policies. It is experimenting with different nature recovery strategies and local land use frameworks. There is some experimentation but there is no set template for us to follow.

We are trying to develop something around co-ordinated or multifunctional land uses which have multiple cross-sectoral benefits as well. That raises a host of issues around the best scale to work at. Should it be a national land use framework or should it be more localised? What type of policy instruments will work? What incentives should be put in place? Critically, we need to determine how we co-produce or co-design policies with key stakeholders. It is not an expert top-down process. It needs to involve grassroots stakeholders as well.