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

I hear Mr. Hogan's views but I think there is benefit in the elected members for an area having an opportunity for a collective discussion about an application.

It has been said here that the opportunity for that is at the development plan stage, but anybody involved in community consultation on planning knows that most of the concerns around planning are site specific. They are about access, parking and where entrances might be or they might be about the impact of adjoining traffic. These are discussions that just do not happen at development plan level. I believe that trying to build consensus on planning issues is important because it removes us from an adversarial role. One of the benefits of the SHD legislation was that it gave councillors a collective opportunity to discuss planning issues. With the advent of online meetings, we are in a very different world in what we can deliver at local authority level. Again, it could be by way of guidelines or best practice, but I would like to see opportunities or, at least, the embedding of the practice in some local authorities whereby area committees have an opportunity to discuss large-scale developments. Those discussions would be recorded by local authorities and submitted as part of the decision-making process.