Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am sure Mr. Sheridan had sleepless nights for quite some time after this legislation was originally passed, given its torturous passage through the House. I will make a couple of introductory remarks and then I will pose some very direct questions both to the Department and to the board.

This was a terrible piece of legislation. I mean that with no disrespect to the enormous amount of time people like Mr. Sheridan and others put into its drafting. Senator Boyhan and I, and others on this committee, highlighted all the problems and risks that eventually transpired. We said that it would not lead to a significant increase in the output of much-needed housing. We also said it would result in land-banking and developers using it to increase the value of their developments. We said it would lead to overriding democratic redevelopment plans and local area plans. We further said it would lead to significant mistrust in local communities excluded from the planning process in the way they ordinarily are. We must be honest that all those outcomes were visible when the legislation initially went through this House. That means my criticisms are not of either the board or the Department's officials, but rather the Deputies in this building back in 2016 and 2017 who voted for or abstained on the vote on the legislation, because we knew where it was going to end up.

The specific purpose of the legislation in my view was never about speeding up the process, because when we looked at the list of developments Niall Cussen, the then senior official dealing with the issue, presented to us, in the vast majority of those local authorities they were making decisions within their clear statutory timeframe. In fact, if anything, it was developers and the delay with requests for information and the very heavy workload that through no fault of its own the board had to deal with, and with limited staff, that led to the very big delays. We need to be straightforward about all this. Very good research has been produced by Mick Lennon from University College Dublin, UCD, and Richard Waldron from Queen's University Belfast, QUB, which shows this was a developer-led piece of legislation brought about through very successful lobbying. Killian Woods, who has made a submission to committee members which they should read, shows the chronic failure of developers to implement the plans for which they have been given permission. My view is that we should not wait until the end of 2021, but that this should go now. The Government should just decide that this has to be scrapped and a better plan put in place.

In terms of my specific questions to Mr. Sheridan and Mr. Hogan, could they explain to committee members the difference between section 15 of the Planning and Development Act, which places a duty on local authorities to implement their city and county development plans, and section 143 of the same Act, where the board only has to have regard to those plans? That is at the very centre of why the Government decided to give this function primarily to the board rather than to local authorities.

Could they also comment on whether, as a result of that, there is a blurring of the distinction between local authorities as the primary planning authority to make decisions and the original intention of the Act for the board to review those decisions? Could they confirm that in fact SHDs will not expire at the end of 2021 but, more likely, at the end of February 2022, because of the delays in planning decisions from the initial period of Covid-19? Could they give us more information on what they hope to replace it with?

My next questions are for the board. Could the witnesses tell us how many positive decisions on SHDs have led to an overriding of development plans and local area plans? Could they tell us how many positive decisions have ended up in judicial reviews?