Mr. Conall Boland:

We have dealt with a number of appeals regarding SDZs going back three to five years. One of the issues that was coming up was appeals regarding how much the section 48 scheme levy should be for SDZ housing areas. That is not an area over which we had any jurisdiction. Another issue that was coming up repeatedly was the provision of transport, water and rail infrastructure, who would be responsible for it and how quickly into the scheme it had to be delivered. Another issue that was coming up was the standard of design. Sometimes the standard of design and building in terms of energy and architecture can be even higher in an SDZ area, delivering a very high-quality product.

Having looked back over the schemes, it appeared to us that there was room for better alignment between, say, the central decision at government level to nominate an SDZ and the mechanisms between that at regional and local authority levels as to who would deliver the various pieces of infrastructure to make it happen and when. What we saw in some cases was maybe a lack of alignment between the various tiers involved. In the planning stage of an SDZ and when the commitment is being made, people should bear in mind at an early stage the economic viability of the project and that if an area is nominated as an SDZ, it seems to work better if all the people with responsibility act together and have thought through who will deliver what. We do not have specific solutions, but people should bear that in mind when nominating.