Mr. Niall Cussen:

I thank the members of the committee for their good questions. I have taken detailed notes of them.

Deputy Ó Broin asked what lessons have been learned. The NSS was the first strategy of its kind in this country.

It was innovative and moving into a space around which many of our structures and institutions were going to be tested in terms of implementation. Sometimes we rush to judgment a little too harshly on the success of the national spatial strategy as it brought about a focus on what was sometimes dysfunction in the planning process, particularly with respect to land zoning and the development plan process. We should remember that before the strategy was done, we had 88 planning authorities in the country with 88 development plans and no overarching strategy. As a result of the strategy, we started to look more closely at statutory development plans, how they added up, how they interfaced with regard to boundaries and whether the numbers added up.

We found a story that was very clear with regard to over-zoning, particularly with regard to inappropriate locations. Without the national spatial strategy, we would not have had the following context. In the mid 2000s, for example, we found one local authority in the midlands was proposing to zone enough land to cater for the total projected population increase of the entire midlands for 20 years. That created a basis for a focused process of statutory interaction with the local authority. Today, that authority is an exemplar of integrating its approach to a broader regional context. So, through a series of statutory interactions using the section 31 direction process, local authorities started to understand more the need to co-ordinate and integrate their forward planning approaches, which led to the Planning and Development (Amendment) Act 2010 and the core strategy approach, with an alignment of infrastructure and so on. Sometimes we forget that the national spatial strategy was the stimulus behind probably one of the most deep-rooted reforms of the planning process in 20 years.

It is a more mixed picture in terms of its regional development impact. There is no doubt that while we were addressing planning reforms, we started to encounter decisions that both moved against the strategy, particularly with regard to decentralisation, as well as the economic headwinds from the 2008 period. For example, the decision to suspend the gateway innovation fund was unfortunate as it was a very important instrument, even though it was limited to the gateway locations.

I will focus for a moment on the expert advisory group. Its view was that the national spatial strategy was trying to perform a number of functions and we had no regional planning guidelines when it was being done. It was trying to stretch from a national to regional to local strategy and it was not strategic enough. The expert advisory group also felt that we probably needed to focus a little more on place and that we needed to be much clearer with regard to implementation. Some of the points relating to metrics, etc., were very well made, although we do face certain challenges. It is not something in which we can get into a large amount of detail within a national document. Nevertheless, the points are very well made with regard to the implementation aspect. If we have not published it already, we can make the expert advisory group document available to members of the committee. It is a very short report that is accessible and easy to understand.

There was a very good observation from Deputy Ó Broin on the importance of engaging with our neighbours on the island. We are meeting our colleagues from the Department for Infrastructure from Northern Ireland this Friday and Mr. Hogan is involved with the north-west gateway project board and arrangements around that. We will meet them again in December. We will need to ensure that the planning framework, "Vision 2040" or whatever way it will be described should evolve very much from an island perspective and also from an east-west perspective, taking in the work of the British-Irish Council and so on, as well as spatial planning work streams. It is something we are particularly keen about.

Deputy Casey raised a point about the NTA and it is important, in the context of this committee, to address that. The transport strategy for the greater Dublin area must be consistent with the national spatial strategy and what will become the national planning framework. In effect, the transport strategy for the Dublin area must look upwards to what is overall national policy on planning, economic development and so on. The Deputy is correct in that there is a reciprocal arrangement in the legislation that the transport strategy for the greater Dublin area acknowledges the regional planning guidelines and what will become the regional spatial economic strategy and vice versa. We are trying to achieve co-ordination between planning, in a spatial and place-based sense, transport, etc.

There is an important connection between an issue raised by Deputy Ó Broin in respect of disadvantage, the transport issue and a general narrative raised by Senator Boyhan on regional development. Let us be honest. With the interface of the Dublin area, there is an ongoing debate around what we do with our motorway junctions and locations with much pressure for development. Some of our colleagues from the Irish Planning Institute have usefully and correctly identified that the billions of euro we spent on our national motorway network will make the latter a national asset for the next 50 years and that how we manage growth and development around that over the next five, ten, 15 or 20 years will be absolutely essential in how that 50-year or 100-year asset will be protected in future.

To bring this back to disadvantage and regional development, I know Wicklow very well because I have family living in the county. There are towns such as Wicklow and Arklow that, in their own sense, exhibit patterns of disadvantage, underutilisation of potential and so on. We can consider the pressure for development and debates around whether the NTA strategy supports the development of Wicklow, and I have followed closely those debates in the Dáil, for example, as well as the questions around that. When we strip it back, are we really talking about what is, in effect, opportunistic development in the locations that might provide cheaper land solutions or better accessibility? Would we not be better from a disadvantage perspective, with a people and place-centred approach to planning, to speak about trying to activate the potential of key towns like Wicklow and Arklow, which are now on the motorway network and accessible? There are people living there and it is where the jobs we need to provide for those people should be, as opposed to, in effect, catering for or in some way being unwittingly part of a further extensification and sprawl of the Dublin area. This example is being played out in most local authority areas abutting the Dublin area.

If we are going to tackle the issue of disadvantage, which exists in this city as much as in regional towns and rural locations, we must try to get the jobs, housing and infrastructure to happen in a more compact footprint. Sometimes that means resisting the pressures there will be for, in effect, more opportunistic development where we see business parks, etc., flung further and further out from where people live. Effectively, that is within an approximate 30 km radius of this city.