Mr. Niall Cussen:

I thank the Senator. On his last question, planning fees are set by the Minister. It is ultimately a matter for the Minister to determine planning fees. As the Senator said, they were most recently revised in 2001. From the point of view of the administration of the planning process and how it works in an overall sense, local authority executives are faced with the dilemma of an ever-increasing requirement for resources in the planning process, enforcement, local plan making, pre-application consultation, online services and all manner of technical and environmental assessments that are required in a much more detailed way. Local authorities must be able to resource that while running libraries, keeping street lights on and cleaning streets, all the good stuff that they do and people take no notice of until the services are missing.

There is a case to be made for looking at fees. A planning application for one house may include people going out and doing site inspections, checking the site notices, undertaking the technical assessment of the drawings, all of that sort of stuff. Is it reasonable that the level of income coming back on that public process is a €65 administration charge? Is it right or fair that taxpayers and ratepayers pay for that service that benefits an individual or developer who is carrying out a particular project or projects? It is something we need to look at because there is an unreasonableness about asking more and more of planning authorities and so on. They may be struggling to put their resources together. It is fair to say in terms of staffing sanctions and so on that the Department and the Minister have been supportive of local authorities increasing staffing and so on. Staffing is only one thing because staff also must be paid. Various different functions have to be resourced etc.

The online planning service may also offer efficiencies. There are some new technologies, including remote sensing, artificial intelligence and being able to map development patterns much more efficiently from satellite imagery. Some fantastic work is being done by Ordnance Survey Ireland with great scope for integration into the planning process and online planning services. Covid-19 has taught us the absolute criticality of online services. Although many planning services are available online, I think we need to improve the quality of the offer. Committee members earlier pointed to a couple of gaps that need to be looked at in that regard. Those considerations fundamentally come back to the resourcing piece. I understand the Minister intends to look at the area of planning fees in the context of the roll-out of online planning services. As has been the case in other Administrations, people can be encouraged to engage more with the online service by differentiating planning fees between the online transaction and the paper transaction and so on and so forth. I am sure all of that is being looked at by the Department.