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

I will be brief. I am a strong advocate of compact growth and increased density. I have never objected to a residential housing development anywhere. I have made submissions to try to improve them, but I make a point of not objecting. I had much sympathy with comments Ms Kenny made in a personal capacity last year which got her into a lot of trouble. However, we must be honest with ourselves. Not a single residential development I have been involved with, be it Part 8 or private, has not been subject to objection. Some objections are vexatious, as are some of the political campaigns. However, there is also a real concern. Those of us who are strong advocates of increased delivery, including in our constituencies, come up against the challenge of the lack of infrastructure investment, which is not the fault of the planning system. There are many good politicians and members of the public who would have no objection to a residential development or high-density development, in principle. Their problem is the strain it would put on already meagre resources. I emphasise that point.

There is a central problem with the SHD legislation. I know the intention of the officials and I would never question Mr. Sheridan's intention to speed up the process. When I hear Mr. Hyde talk about consistency and when I heard officials talk previously off the record about overcoming the eccentricities of the city and county development plans, it shows there was a second objective, which was to try to have a single set of standards across all local authorities for the ease of developers. That is the one thing developers advocated.

I would like to have legislation to end this process earlier, but I would like the more robust pre-planning process that has emerged in this to be put into statute, albeit led by the local authorities. There should also be a legal timeframe within which the additional information that is requested would have to be returned, because that was one of the main delays in the previous system. The board needs to have very rigid timelines for taking decisions, as do local authorities. If that means more resources, they should be provided. If we did that, we would have the best of both worlds. There would be robust pre-planning, robust initial decisions by the local authorities, speedy additional information and fair reviews. I say that because we may not have another opportunity.

The initiation of this, and Paul Hogan got it right, was people saying the planning process was the problem. The planning process was never the problem in my view in this respect. However, we must ensure that whatever emerges from this does not repeat the mistakes of this or the previous system so we can get a better outcome for everybody. That is my final comment.