Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will follow up on a few of the exchanges and then I want to add a few more issues into the mix. Clearly, there are two types of enforcement. One is where there is a serious egregious breach, where somebody has done something that the person clearly should not have done and the person knew he or she should not have done it. Then there are much more minor breaches or breaches which, strictly speaking, are technical breaches that are not really of a substantive nature. There will then be grey areas continuing between them. We have to make sure that whatever we do takes a very hard position on those people who make egregious breaches. Deputy Higgins is right. Part of our constituency has a rural hinterland. We have experience of small quarries or other industrial type activities that are in flagrant breach of planning. They are subject to enforcement, including notices to cease their activities, but because it is commercially viable for them to continue right up to the point of whether the council decides to take court action, they continue to do them.

I heard what the Mr. Ryan said in terms of somebody who had done his or her best, particularly if it is one of those minor, less substantive issues. However, I have a concern, and perhaps I am reading too much into his remarks, that we do not get much tougher on those egregious breaches. One of the weaknesses in the system is not that people are being blasé about it but that the system allows people to make significant and continual breaches of planning. We need to get very tough with that. There is an additional point, and it is slightly tangential. We also must make sure that building control enforcement and planning enforcement properly co-operate and collaborate. I have seen some instances in other local authorities where a decision was made by a planning authority which is not consistent with best practice in terms of building control. That only becomes apparent when something is built with regard to locations and materials that are conditions of planning. Then there is a problem. There is a planning authority that has given a permission, but then the building control officers in that planning authority, who are sometimes juniors in the power hierarchy in the department, are now in conflict with their own senior planning officials and the director of planning and development.

While it is not directly related to the review because building control is a separate enforcement regime, consideration needs to be given to make sure some of those inconsistencies in the system can be resolved.

Ms Graham mentioned the environmental court. Similar to the points I made about the board, and I appreciate it will come under another Department which makes me nervous because it is such a crucial part of fixing our planning system, I am not sure it should have any enforcement role, certainly initially, because I would have thought most immediate need would be with respect to judicial reviews of planning decisions. The court would need to have a level of planning and environmental expertise, not only judges but significant resourcing of staff members who can deal with those matters. If we start lobbing on all the enforcements, or even enforcements above a certain level, would we be burdening what will be a very important new institution, if and when we get it, with too much, or should we make it the appeal body for large enforcement cases that have been taken elsewhere? The real value the environmental court is how we protect people’s access to justice under the Aarhus Convention while being able to provide for that in a speedy and timelined fashion without in any way compromising those issues. That is a consideration.

In its submission to the committee, the Irish Planning Institute raised an issue, which I want to raise by way of a question. It stated one provision that does not seem to be included in the issues under consideration is sectoral referrals to the board in the absence of public participation. I would be interested to hear that is now under consideration or a reason for its exclusion.

Climate must become a bigger part of everything we do at this committee, in the Department and in the construction sector. We are about to get our sectoral emissions targets. They will all be at the top end from what we read in the newspapers and I believe that to be a good thing. There is not an element of any aspect of the construction process, including planning, that can be immune to change in that respect. There might be a need, in a revised and update planning and development Act, for a module on a section on the interaction of climate emissions reduction and planning specifically on how we will deal with the embodied carbon reductions that will be a legal requirement. There are a few practical suggestions, which we have discussed at the committee previously. One relates to demolition audits. When somebody puts in a planning application to demolish a building there should be an audit on whether that is appropriate, the implications of that and whether that is what is best required. Local authorities should be able to refuse applications on the basis of a negative demolition order where the applicant has not made sufficient case. There are cases where a demolition is fine but rather than using the demolished structure for landfill, it could be reused and recycled into the built environment. We could have reuse orders that could be conditions of grants of permission, which would be important.

While Ms Graham's colleagues on the building control side will examine what are the standardised matrixes for determining what the embodied carbon is of new buildings and new building products, it would be a mistake for us not to then apply some of that to planning. It could be a feature of the planning system whereby there are requirements or where it is possible for a local authority to ensure that as part of that stated jurisdiction, it meets its emissions reduction target under the sectoral emissions reduction legislation. Certain categories of building could be refused on the basis that carbon content is too high at a particular given time. I know these are big new ideas, or they are not part of a previous conversation, but it would be a shame for us to do this major review and streamline this Act into a good item of legislation and afterwards for someone to ask about these carbon budgets and the fines we would fines from the European Commission if we do not meet those in each sector? Climate and how it interacts with planning will be key. I would be interested to hear whether that has been part of the discussion so far.