Mr. John McCarthy:

I shall answer the questions in order and I might call on some of my colleagues to answer as we work our way through them.

In terms of the NPF, as the Senator has rightly said, the ambitions of the NPF are significant in terms of what it seeks to achieve around how we plan for future development. It is very clear that the framework aims to deliver a pattern of development that differs from what we have had so far and I suppose it has a disruptive element. Obviously the framework is a high-level national strategy. The two next critically important pieces of the jigsaw will be the regional spatial and economic strategies, which are being worked on by the three regional assemblies at the moment. The strategies will likely go to public consultation in all three cases within the next few weeks. When those are adopted they, in turn, will guide the adoption of city and county development plans. It is really to try and ensure that there is a cascade from the centre to the regional and to the local, and that it all makes sense at the end of the day.

As the Senator rightly said, when it comes to the regional spatial and economic strategies, RSESs, and then to city and county development plans, they are for the elected members to adopt as part of the democratic process. I am sure, and I think there are already, in the context of RSESs, quite a few debates going on and that is as it should be. If the NPF is designed to try to deliver a different form of planning and development into the future, it would be a bit worrying to some extent if there were not debates of that kind going on. I have no doubt that such debates will continue on through the consultation process on the RSESs and down to city and county development plans.

In terms of high rise units being part of the plan, there is high-rise and high-density development. Certainly, in many areas where we have planned and developed over the past while, we have come a long way in terms of higher density without necessarily going very high-rise. One can achieve a lot in that space by good and imaginative design.

The consultation period has just finished for new guidelines on heights for apartment developments and I expect the guidelines will be finalised shortly. I will not say where they will land because we are considering the responses received as part of the public consultation process. There are choices and decisions that must be made if we want to deliver an Ireland in 2040 in the planned way mentioned in the NPF. It does have to differ from the way that it was done heretofore, which presents challenges around density and high-rise issues, and the use that we make of brownfield sites.

Ultimately, one would hope that the process through the RSESs and the city and county development plans would get us to where we need to be. I am around long enough to know that difficult situations arise. There are times when ministerial powers of direction must be considered and, sometimes, deployed. We will just have to see how things progress with the work that is under way. The level of ambition and future way of planning is hugely attractive. I hope that the city and county development plans will recognise and reflect that in due course but we will have to see how that goes.