Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Amendment No. 85 seeks to delete section 13(1)(f). This section enables the LDA to appraise sites, prepare master plans and planning submissions, make planning applications and obtain development consents and approval. Obviously, that would be crucial to the development and to how the agency would operate. To delete that section would further neuter this agency and is not something I can support.

Amendment No. 227 seeks to delete parts of section 77 that provide that the LDA will be a development agency under the Planning and Development Acts. The central role of the LDA is to develop relevant public lands for housing, which mean to build homes for people. In order to do so it must have the powers to appraise sites, prepare planning applications and obtain development consents. Were this amendment to be passed, it would set back this land management agency for years to come. We would be stripping it of such significant powers and denying it a role in the development of housing. It is wholly appropriate that the LDA would be a development agency in relation to sites that are relevant public lands or land owned by it. Designating the LDA as a development agency will permit it to develop planning schemes and enter into agreements with parties to develop strategic development zones, SDZs, on relevant public lands and lands in its ownership. I want to be really clear that it does not confer any planning consent role on the LDA. I would point out the role of the LDA as a development agency is limited to these circumstances and it will not have the full range of development agency powers that are assigned to a local authority. In addition, other State bodies such as the IDA and the Grangegorman Development Agency have similar development agency roles. This puts what we are doing in context. I cannot accept these amendments as they would undermine the role of the LDA in the development of sites on relevant public lands.