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

Many committee members share my view that we would like fewer planning matters coming before the courts.

Although I have sometimes used the phrase publicly, I am not of the view that the courts are making planning decisions. There are, however, increasing volumes of conflicts between different sets of planning law, such as between specific planning policy requirements, SPPRs, and development plans or between the transposition of EU environmental directives and development projects and the climate action plan. The Galway ring road is the most obvious recent example in that regard. If there was one set of clear planning laws, with a clear relationship between the hierarchies, that would make things much more straightforward. The frustration is that there is evidence that what is before us will restrict the access of certain groups to the courts but the Department told us in its opening statement that is not its intention or what it is doing, even though it is evidently what it is doing. The committee will probably hear evidence at a later stage from legal experts that this could increase litigation, albeit other kinds of litigation. The SHD process is very different from this but the outcome is the same. If, in trying to fix a problem, there is a focus on a symptom rather than the cause, that creates a set of other problems. Do the witnesses share that view on any of these matters?