Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 1 December 2021

Select Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government

Planning and Development (Amendment) (Large-scale Residential Development) Bill 2021: Committee Stage

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

On what will be done before Report Stage, much of what the Deputies are looking for is in the various sections of the Bill already. I fully support and want public involvement in our planning system. That is why I am bringing SHDs to an end early and why I want to do that. We will tease out this issue a bit further. It is up to the Deputy whether he presses the amendment, and I fully respect that. However, we will examine a mechanism that we could potentially bring forward on Report Stage, perhaps under regulations, whereby we could explore giving the public participation networks, PPNs, a role.

This aspect must be structured properly, though. The definition of "Community Organisation" in the Deputy's first amendment is very broad. What is it? Do they have to be registered? I have discussed this with Deputy McAuliffe previously. If organisations are registered with the PPN, at least a formal channel would be in place. It would mean that a group is not just set up as the "Thomas Pringle Group", for example, and then we could also have "The Provisional Eoin Ó Broin Group", or something like that, where groups are just set up overnight. I do not mean to be facetious. However, we would need to have a structure, and potentially the PPN could be that structure. As I said, I think we can do something in that regard by means of the regulations. As we go through the Bill, the Deputy will see that we have vastly improved the input at the initial planning stage. We are restoring that, and, equally, all the information concerning pre-applications must be published at the application stage.

Let us think about it this way. Not every pre-application goes forward as a planning application. When that does happen, all the records of those meetings and the opinions and information sought must be published with the formal application. Therefore, there is full transparency, and rightly so. Every time an application is lodged under the LRD process, every local authority member, namely, the councillors, must be advised as a matter of course. We will see that as we move through the Bill.

As I said, it is up to the Deputy to decide whether he wishes to press his amendment. We can come back to an element of this on Report Stage and we might be able to provide further clarification then. I hope that is okay.

Comments

No comments

Log in or join to post a public comment.