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

I will pick up on Deputy Flaherty's points about the regulator and planning. As Ms Graham will know, I was very critical of the weakness of the legislation. There is a lot of confusion in the debates. This is not just a rural battle because the good people of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council have been in battle with the regulator on a not dissimilar point. However, the regulator does not make those policies. Whether one agrees with the policies or not, the challenge is with the national planning framework, the housing need and demand assessment, HNDA, and the outworking of Government policy. This is not in any way a comment on Deputy Flaherty's remarks, but it is very unfortunate that the planning regulator has become a whipping boy for Government policies on the floor of the Dáil. That is not to say I agree or disagree with the individual policies. If people do not like those policies, they should focus on who made the policies and not the individual officeholder or the office. Some of the language used in the House with respect to the individual who holds that office is not only unfair but misunderstands the fact it is the policies that are the cause of those contentions. If we want to change the policies, we should focus on that.

I completely agree with Ms Graham. Zoning is an enormous gift from the elected officials of a local authority to an owner of land. It gives the owner an enormous increase to the value of that land. If somebody is not using it, that zoning should be taken away. Separate to the national planning framework, housing need and demand assessments, rural planning guidelines and zoning guidelines, I will go a step further and say that if the owner of zoned land - my preference would be over the course of one development plan cycle but somebody else might be a little more generous and say over two - especially residential zoned land, has not used it, he or she should have to justify the retention of that zoning. There is just a presumption that zoning moves from one development plan to another.

We have a big challenge in the Vice Chairman's constituency, my constituency and elsewhere as regards land that will never be used residentially because it is not serviced or due to the intent of the owner, but is zoned. Somebody who has land that is potentially serviced, and could and would develop it in this development plan process, applies for zoning but because of the HNDA, and I support it and the way it is operated, certainly in the Dublin local authorities - I do not follow the details of authorities outside Dublin - we end up with this bizarre situation where we retain zoning for somebody who has not developed land for ten years and is probably not likely to develop it, and deny zoning to somebody in a contiguous piece of land that could be developed. The development plan process should be much tougher. I do not mean we would take everybody's zoning away but if somebody has not reasonably attempted to initiate development or to develop, in the context of this review, we should get tough on that.

My questions are as follows. Ms Graham and Mr. Paul Hogan made two interesting comments during their responses at the last meeting. I will not ask Ms Graham to comment on the first but I will say it in response to her because I said it at that meeting. She specifically reminded us that the Government makes policy and the Attorney General provides legal advice. That is strictly true and that is the position, but where an Attorney General is quite activist and takes quite an activist role, and this Attorney General has done that in a number of areas, which could be a good or bad thing, the dividing line between policy and legislation becomes very blurred. I am not saying that is a bad thing, especially when planning, law and environment are so inextricably linked. The point I made, and Ms Graham reassured me at the last meeting, is that the maximum transparency we have in respect of the work and output of the Attorney General's work is very important because that then allows us to make a decision on where those lines blur and that informs the debate. I just wanted to say that.

There was another very interesting comment. Mr. Hogan used a great phrase when he indicated that we had "backed off" on the SPPR approach. That was a phrase he used and that was the happiest moment I had when I read through the transcript. I hoped Mr. Hogan would be here so I could ask him to elaborate on it but I am sure Ms Graham can do so. It is an important point because, again, she has heard many concerns from this committee and its predecessor either about the SPPRs or how they manifest. I hope Ms Graham might talk a little to that. I presume it is also in the context of the clarification of things that are mandatory and things that are discretionary. If Ms Graham fleshes that out a little for us, that could be helpful to us in understanding the plan.