Mr. Niall Cussen:

We thank the committee for the opportunity to meet with it today to discuss Project Ireland 2040, including the national planning framework, NPF, which our Department has lead responsibility for. I am accompanied by Mr. Paul Hogan, who is the project manager for the NPF, and Ms Alma Walsh, one of our team of planning advisers. Our remarks focus on the national planning framework aspect of Project Ireland 2040, including its linkages as well with the national development plan, NDP, under the overall banner of Project Ireland 2040.

As members of the committee will be well aware, the NPF sets a long-term strategic planning framework for Ireland over the next 20 years, setting out some key principles in relation to better managing the future population growth of 1 million extra people, an extra over 660,000 people at work and an additional 500,000 extra homes required.

The big innovation in Project Ireland 2040 is the integration of planning with future capital investment. Crucially, the NPF and the ten year NDP investment strategy have been fully aligned. There is a €116 billion capital investment programme. Both the programme and the planning framework are founded on ten national strategic outcomes shared between both documents and designed to: deliver more balanced and sustainable regional development; timely enhancement of the infrastructure required to meet the needs of the country; and meet challenges and headwinds, including climate change, Brexit and so on. We have worked very closely with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and we are very confident that all the planned capital investment under the NDP will directly or indirectly support the achievement of the strategic outcomes. From our Department's point of view, particular headline elements of the NDP, from a planning point of view, include the establishment of the national regeneration and development agency and €3 billion of investment in urban and rural regeneration and development funding, which will particularly support the NPF's aims around compact urban development and the continued development and vitality of rural communities, particularly smaller towns and villages that face a lot of challenges today. Progression of these initiatives is a particular priority for us in terms of implementation in the weeks and months ahead.

I will turn to that broader issue of implementation. Subsequent to its publication a little more than a month ago, our Department has now written to all local authorities, regional assemblies and An Bord Pleanála notifying them that the NPF constitutes national planning policy in accordance with section 2 of the Planning and Development Act 2000, as amended, and all other relevant provisions of the Act. Also, recognising that the NPF is the first part of a broader updating of Ireland’s strategic planning policy frameworks to be followed by preparation of regional spatial and economic strategies, RSESs, of which members will be aware, our team has spent much of its time since the launch sitting down with the regional assemblies, the local authorities as well as a broad range of other interested stakeholders, addressing their questions, their queries and so on and seeking out views in relation to building a comprehensive implementation strategy.

As members of the committee will also be aware, the Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill 2016 is currently on Committee Stage in the Seanad and will, in line with the recommendations of the Mahon tribunal, put in place a statutory process for the regular review and updating of the national planning framework, much as is the case for other tiers of Ireland’s planning policy hierarchy at present. Moreover, to ensure a swift and coherent translation of the content of the NPF and regional spatial and economic strategies into the statutory local authority development plans, which, as the committee members will know, can take several years to come up for review depending on when their preparation was commenced, there is an amendment in the Bill to recalibrate development plan review timings to ensure that imminent reviews are held over until such time as the updated policies and metrics from the NPF, the RSES process and so on are available and that plans adopted in recent years also are brought in for variations to update them accordingly.

With the initial briefings and stakeholder engagement being almost complete, and necessarily that was quite an intensive programme. We sat down, directly or indirectly, with all the 31 local authorities and so on. We are now moving into more strategic issues in relation implementation, including working directly with the regional assemblies and the local authorities in terms of the preparation and the conclusion of the regional spatial economic strategies by or shortly after the end of this year.

Another priority is to develop an effective framework with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform to ensure implementation as part of the wider Project Ireland 2040 process and the associated governance and oversight. This includes arrangements for cross-departmental and stakeholder co-ordination. Meetings will take place today and in the coming weeks in that regard. The gathering of key data and monitoring systems is important. We have significant brownfield development targets and we have to develop the way we measure them in practice. We need to ensure that the data gathering process feeds in to the overall implementation process to create an agile, responsive and outcome-based implementation approach.

We need to work on the development of the options and on putting in place arrangements for the establishment of the national regeneration and development agency. We have to finalise certain operational and evaluation elements of the proposed regeneration and development funds in conjunction with our colleagues in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and the Department of Rural and Community Development. The process includes taking on board views of relevant stakeholders, such as the local authorities, which will ultimately administer these funds.

We are a little over a month into the implementation of a strategy that looks out over the next 20 years. Although we are at an early stage in the implementation process, it is gathering pace. I wish to emphasise that we welcome the views of the committee on these and related matters. The committee has provided great assistance to us in the past with committee input for the national planning framework. We are before the committee as much to discuss the different issues or different emphasis that the committee may wish to see in the implementation process. We are happy to come back on these areas as we develop more detail on the implementation process. Mr. Hogan, Ms Walsh and I are happy to take any questions or discuss any issues that committee members may wish to raise with us.