Ms Maria Graham:

I thank the committee for the invitation to attend today to discuss the planning review. As the Chair outlined, I am joined by Ms Mary Jones, Mr. Eugene Waters, Mr. Paul Hogan and Mr. Colin Ryan. As the Committee is aware, the planning review is one of the actions contained within Housing for All, which highlights the fact that Ireland is fortunate to have a planning system that enables considerable public participation but needs to build on that to ensure our planning legislation is fit for the modern era. As the Chair said, the Planning and Development Act 2000 has been amended many times and, as a result, can be somewhat impenetrable for the public and practitioners alike. This review, led by the Attorney General, is the most comprehensive review of planning since the Act was first drafted. Its key aim is to ensure the provisions align with policy and are more accessible and streamlined from a legal perspective.

There are a number of key principles guiding this aspect of the review, including avoidance of unnecessary change; increased clarity and streamlining of the legislation; a chronological format for processes with clear signposts to other sections or legislation; to improve coherence and usability of procedures; completeness of transposition of EU directives; adherence to constitutional requirements; and respect for the role of the public.

Overlaying these principles are a number of key policy aims that were set out in Housing for All. They are to ensure that the major debate, particularly on the scale of housing requirements to meet needs in line with the objectives of compact urban growth and environmental sustainability, is focused on the plan-making rather than the planning application stage and in this way to facilitate greater clarity and long-term visibility in planning outcomes. It is also to ensure that adequate account is taken of the needs of the future population of new and expanded communities, as well as the needs of existing communities, and that appropriate account is taken of the nature of planning decisions, which require careful balancing of public policy, public participation and environmental issues.

Turning to how the review is being carried out, the initial work of the review is being advanced by a working group, largely of legal experts, established by the Attorney General. They have identified 14 topical individual work streams and they present reports on each of these aspects to the Department as the work advances. Initially, this involves a first pass through the relevant legislative provisions to identify if change is required, for example, whether the provision is still valid, if it is located in the right place in the Act or if it needs amendment. The Department inputs to this consideration, leading to a further elucidation of the matter and ultimately to a relevant draft. The working group is aiming to have the revised Bill finalised by September this year, to enable completion of the work by December 2022. To aid the Department’s consideration, we have established a number of groups: an interdepartmental group comprising Departments with specific roles in respect of the consenting regime; an operational group to consider the practical impact of any suggestions, including the County and City Management Association, CCMA, An Bord Pleanála, the Office of the Planning Regulator and the Environmental Protection Agency; and a planning advisory forum comprising a wide range of stakeholders. The terms of reference of the planning advisory forum and its membership have been provided to the committee for information.

Generally, in all these groups the Department presents a paper on a theme, which outlines the present position, gathers the issues being raised by the review and poses a number of key questions for consideration to assist the Department in formulating its policy response. The papers that have been prepared to date are on three essential components of an effective planning regime: the planning and plan-making process; the consent process; and enforcement. More recently, the planning advisory forum has considered a paper on the corporate provisions in the legislation relating to An Bord Pleanála and the Office of the Planning Regulator. We envisage that further broad areas for discussion will be the topics of environmental assessment and judicial review.

It is important to note, as the committee is aware, that this process is advancing contemporaneously with other legislative and reform work. For example, the Planning and Development (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill 2022 dealing with substitute consent is currently before the Seanad, and work is advancing on a general scheme of a Bill to introduce urban development zones and land value sharing. These will ultimately be incorporated into the new planning and development Bill. In addition, the Department is working with the CCMA on the issue of planning resources for local authorities, and we touched on this when we were before the committee to discuss urban development, and with the board on its resourcing needs. We are also working on the digitalisation of the planning service, which is important for both public access to the service and the efficiency of the planning service.

One of the first papers is on plans and guidelines, which we provided to the committee. I will give an overview on that. The paper we circulated mirrors the paper presented to the planning advisory forum. As outlined in the paper, it is a key policy imperative that the planning service be plan-led and evidence-based rather than developer-led. This is an essential prism through which we are looking at the efficacy of current provisions. This work recognises that the county and city development plans and local area plans are a critical underpinning of the plan-led approach and are also a central element of local democracy. The provisions on plans and guidelines in the revised legislation therefore should: create a solid platform for plan-led growth, protection and renewal; provide consistency in decision-making that reflects national spatial policy; and embed the role of elected members and meaningful public participation in the plan-making processes.

While the paper tracks through a range of developments in recent times in pursuit of this policy, there are a number of issues emerging through the consultation with the working group and the planning advisory forum on which it would be useful to get the views of the committee. For example, some of the areas of growing consensus through the various groups are: supporting the commitment in Housing for All that the development plans should give a much clearer sense to the public of the nature and scale of developments in the area, rather than this emerging at planning application stage; that development plans need to be shorter and more concise and clear in terms of the future place-making for an area; that the role of national, regional and local planning policy should be more clearly articulated in the legislation both in terms of the role of the Minister and with regard to the mandatory or discretionary nature of planning guidance; that development plans should be of longer duration, up to ten years, but with a review point; and that consideration needs to be given to the appropriate interaction between local area plans with the development plan, town centre first plans and new urban development plans as part of the process of the public clearly understanding on a timely basis the developmental objectives for their area. These are some of the themes on which we would welcome the committee’s views.

I thank the committee again for the opportunity to outline the nature of the review process and to commence the discussion on plan-making. We envisage that other topics and themes could be addressed at future meetings. We appreciate the time the committee is going to give to this issue. We are happy to answer any questions members of the committee have either on the modalities of the review or on the paper.