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

Colleagues will know this but it is important to reiterate that this relates to the application going to the local planning authority. Anyone can make an application for anything. Our process will involve a pre-application stage. Applicants coming in will have to go through the pre-application stage. A local authority may point out a contravention of the development plan in the applications and say it does not want that. If the application came through and the local authority, rather than the board, granted it, the elected members would still need to vote to contravene the development plan. I take Deputy Duffy's point. I have not been talking about any specific planning decision but I take the Deputy's point regarding some of the decisions An Bord Pleanála has made with regard to SHDs. However, where a council has let it be known that it disapproves of an application, this has only happened through a consultative process by way of a submission to An Bord Pleanála. These provisions are much stronger. In the instance of an application for a large-scale residential development going through this process, the planners would have to agree to bring any contravention of the development plan to the members for a vote.

Deputy Ó Broin spoke about exceptional circumstances. How do we define such circumstances? I take it that Deputy Ó Broin's amendment No. 9 relates to the local authority planning system rather than the board. There are existing provisions. They refer to exceptional circumstances. I have tried to outline what some such circumstance might be in my initial response but we cannot accept amendments Nos. 3, 9 or 37.

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