Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

My questions are on the clustering of SHD applications and the comparison with local area plans, LAPs, or strategic development and regeneration areas, SDRAs. Do the witnesses accept that when there are clustered SHDs, they effectively bypass or undermine existing LAPs or the potential to have new LAPs?

The witnesses have talked about relying on the zoning and on each application standing on its own merits. The difficulty is there is no planning tool available to local authorities to differentiate between a ten-storey privately managed 90% use of the housing assistance payment, HAP, and a ten-storey mixed tenure and mixed income development. Therefore, it is difficult to give permission to one rather than the other but they are different prospects and they need different community supports. Do the witnesses accept that the judicial review is not an effective appeal mechanism in areas that do not have access to barristers?

There are positive elements to the SHDs. The statutory involvement of local authority members at a recorded meeting that is submitted is positive and the formalised pre-consultation is also positive but I worry about the effective eradication of LAPs and SDRAs, which are effectively the settled will or a bargaining between local authority members, communities and elected representatives.