Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Public engagement in the development plan is always to be desired but sometimes it is overwhelming for the public. It is a two-year process and sometimes you wonder if it is still ongoing and if it is still the same development plan and issues paper you were looking at a year and a half ago. Members of the public often put considerable time and effort into going to many of the public consultations and putting together big submissions. A chief executive's response would be that this should be catered for in a separate plan. Is there a value in clearly setting out for the public what should be in a county development plan and what it does? It is not a delivery plan. It is a land use plan and that is one of the clearest things I have ever been able to explain to people because they think it is a delivery plan. However, the delivery is done because it is an objective and it sometimes comes from private or public investment.

We could do with something along the lines of the planning leaflets from years ago and which the OPR has just issued. They provide clear guidance to people about what the planning process is, where the public can get involved in it and what requires planning. The advertisement that goes in the newspaper informing people they can make submissions to their county development plans involves a lot of legalese and talks about having to incorporate statutory notice etc. We need to simplify it and bring people into it. The more we engage with people at the start and get them involved, the better. Even if they do not like the outcome, at least they have been part of the process and maybe they can better understand why they did not get the outcome they wanted. Another thing about the planning system is if you get your planning permission or if somebody does not get the planning permission you did not want him or her to get, then the system is great. However, when it goes against you, the system is terrible and it is all wrong. It depends on what side of the argument you are on.

On putting objectives in a county plan, I have come across situations where you might have a strategic local objective, SLO, an area action plan or zoning objectives.

Unless you are very prescriptive about the objectives for that zoning, an application will come in where the applicant has used a great deal of imagination in regard to what was meant. If it is too prescriptive, that stymies innovation in regard to what the applicant thinks would be the best use for it, whereas if it is too loose and open, it is open to too much interpretation. We need to find a balance. The objectives should be binding but they should be written in such a way that everybody will be clear regarding the envelope of design that could be there. We talk about densities and zoning 45 units to the hectare, or whatever the case may be. If a number of smaller units are being brought in, however, it might be possible to get more units onto the land. It needs to be clear for people reading the plan.

It is often described to the public as "your plan" and the advertisements refer to the public having their say. Similarly, it is often described to elected members as their plan and it is suggested they should make the decisions on it. To many elected members, that seems to indicate they can include whatever they want because it is their plan and they do not have to be bound by what is out there. That then goes to the chief executive, who may recommend not to include a given objective. Often, senior planners from the likes of Transport Infrastructure Ireland, TII, the National Transport Authority, NTA, An Taisce or the Department will recommend to members that they not include an objective, perhaps for good reason, and it might still be voted through at a meeting. It will then be kicked up the chain to the OPR and Ministers to issue a directive. There has to be more accountability at local level. If elected members are going to ignore completely advice from a range of professions, overrule it and vote against it, there should be repercussions. If a ministerial directive is not issued, there will be a legacy for the next generation whereby if housing is built in the wrong place or the zoning was done wrongly, that is why the roads are congested, why services are unable to be provided or why school places are not available. That issue needs to be drummed out. I cannot emphasise enough that there needs to be accountability among people voting on objectives in the development plan.

Another issue that often arises with applicants is they will state "in close proximity to public transport", which can just mean a bus stop somewhere down the road that does not have a frequent service. Saying a development is close to a bus stop is not the same as saying it is close to public transport. There may be a service, but how likely is it that the people who will live in those houses will present themselves for an irregular bus service? They just will not do so. It will be car dependency and that is what we are baking in. We are baking people into commuting, with further transport emissions.

Finally, I turn to the housing and planning and development Bill 2019, or the judicial review Bill, as we have been calling it. If aspects and heads of that Bill are included somewhere along the way when we get to the legislative part of this process, I would like that to be highlighted clearly to the committee. When everything was together in one Bill, it was very easy for us to see, and I do not want it to come in in bits and pieces whereby we cannot keep track of it. We have received many submissions from interested parties on the issue. We were in the process of going to pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill and we deferred it, but we got a lot of submissions from people who are very concerned about it. We want to be clear, therefore, that it will not come in incrementally in bits and pieces, and I stress that must be the case.

I thank our guests and hope they will take those observations on board. We will look forward to further meetings on these themes.