Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thank everyone who has come in. I first want to respond to some comments that were made suggesting that land value sharing is a modern form of the Kenny report. I have a very different view on that. Land value sharing, as it has been explained, is about collecting some of the uplift in land values and then using it for infrastructure. That is very different from the Kenny report, whose main aim was to effectively cap the cost of development land to ensure that land for development would be affordable, which would then result in housing being affordable. The two are linked but they are very different. There is still a need to do what the Kenny report set out to do, although land value sharing is welcome all the same.

On the general point regarding legislation, there is no question but that good legislation is in plain English and easy to understand. A layperson should be able to understand it. That has the effect of making it much easier for people when it comes to enforcement or public participation.

It should also reduce legal conflicts. We all agree that planning legislation is not easily accessible to a layperson, but many people involved in the system professionally also say they find it difficult and complex, which leads to further confusion, litigation and so forth.

We must learn from recent years. By any measure, SHDs have been a disaster. They have backfired on those who lobbied for the legislation in the belief it would lead to quicker decision-making and reduced costs. It actually led to the opposite. It had three unintended consequences, none of which anyone wanted. It built capacity and knowledge in local communities around how to engage in judicial reviews as part of the planning process. If the intention was to design a way to equip local communities in this way, the legislation could not have been better designed. Their capacity has been built up strongly in recent years and it will not be turned off quickly. I hope a better planning system removes the reasons for people to take judicial reviews. The experience, knowledge sharing and knowledge gaining encouraged by the SHD programme will not be stopped immediately.

The legislation also led to a large number of contraventions of development plans. While the aim of development plans and local area plans is to provide more certainty and clarity, we are now at a point where there is less clarity than ever. Virtually every SHD I have seen has entailed multiple contraventions of development plans. While development plans and local area plans might provide a vision of how development should happen in an area, there is now less clarity than ever before where larger planning applications are concerned. A consequence of this has been the growth not just in uncertainty but also in attempts by some to increase land values through speculative planning, which is not focused on the delivery of housing but on increasing land prices. This has unhelpful knock-on effects in terms of viability.

There has been a great deal of commentary to the effect that the planning system is an obstacle to housing delivery, but we need to see clear evidence of that. More than 80,000 granted planning applications are in the system but are not being built out. At our current construction levels, that equates to four years of supply. There are areas in the planning system that need to be improved, we need the legislation to be simplified and put in plain and accessible English, and we need to improve public participation and value access to justice. We can do all of that and have a more efficient system that provides more certainty. These are not contradictory aims. The contradiction between the aim of wanting more certainty from development plans and how there is less certainty than ever now has to be bottomed out. I appreciate the intention is to do this by getting rid of some of the contradictions between development plans and the national planning framework, which will take time.

On the proposals to extend development plans to ten years, I have concerns about accountability and transparency. During the week, I spoke to a few councillors from other parties and groups at a community meeting in my constituency. One of the more experienced councillors said he felt it had taken three development plans for him to understand and be involved in the process properly and to engage constructively. It is not that he did not have an understanding up to that point. He was referring to really being on top of it and reaching a point where he was able to challenge some of the other perspectives effectively. If the period was extended to ten years and it takes three development plans to understand them fully, we would be talking about 30 years for a councillor to build up that senior level of experience. There would also be a concern around elected officials' accountability to their communities if development plans were pushed out to ten years. It would cause many issues and a great deal of distrust. Depending on how the timings fall, it might take councillors ten years to be involved in the process and then another five before they face the electorate again.

Following on from the comments made by the Chairman and Deputy Ó Broin, a balance must be struck. The committee and the wider Oireachtas can deal with legislation efficiently. Given the importance of this matter and public confidence in it and in light of how the public debate around it has been contentious, it is vital we do not rush through any of the stages of the process. I am committed to doing this work efficiently and in a time-effective manner, but parts of the process must not be rushed.

Is the problem of speculative planning, which is aimed at increasing land values rather than delivering housing and for which some landowners have used the planning process, being considered as part of the review? Is the Department examining the relevant evidence and perspectives?

Senator Moynihan spoke about the delivery of infrastructure, and sometimes the failure to deliver infrastructure, especially where larger planning applications were concerned. I have seen this happen. The lack of childcare places in many parts of the country has been a crisis in recent years, yet we have seen permissions being granted for large planning applications that entail material contraventions and do not deliver the number of childcare cases required under development plans. This leads to a serious underprovision of childcare places. There is a cost to this, with people trying to return to the workplace but being unable to get childcare. Permission has been granted for thousands of homes despite the underprovision of childcare places. This is just one example of the underprovision of infrastructure. How much are issues like this featuring in the review?