Ms Kathryn Meghen:

I thank the Cathaoirleach, Deputies and Senators for the opportunity to address the committee on this important legislation. I am the CEO at the RIAI, and I am joined by Ms Charlotte Sheridan, president of the RIAI.

I would like to provide some background about the institute. It was founded in 1839, and has more than 4,000 individual members who are registered architects and architectural technologists. Our members work in the public, private and voluntary sectors, and they work on a daily basis engaging with the planning system in the delivery of places to live, work and recreate.

We believe the review of the Planning and Development Act provides a once in a generation opportunity to create a system which supports the needs and ambitions of the people. It is essential that the Oireachtas takes this opportunity to deliver a Planning and Development Act that is fit for this purpose. It must meet the true purpose of planning, which is to take a long-term view of the population, demographic and built environment needs of the country, and provide a system that proactively manages the development and use of land in the long-term public interest. The Planning and Development Act must allow all those impacted the opportunity to actively engage at an early stage to shape their communities in a productive, proactive and non-adversarial manner.

We need to take this opportunity to change the culture of how we plan. The RIAI welcomed the adoption by the Government of the national policy of architecture, Places for People, in 2022. This policy sets out the Government’s ambition to promote and embed quality in architecture and place-making, and to increase environmental, economic and social sustainability and resilience. This ambition needs to be embedded in the culture of planning and in the new planning and development Act.

The RIAI would strongly recommend that we look to our European counterparts, who have adopted a multidisciplinary collaborative approach between all stakeholders to deliver a design-led, three-dimensional system of planning. The RIAI believes that providing design-led plans that have had the benefit of public engagement and are delivered in a format that the public can clearly understand will create greater certainty, and could significantly reduce the number of objections and legal challenges, and enhance the quality of outcomes.

We would like to mention a research project, Irish Cities 2070, which is led by a group within the RIAI with colleagues from the Irish Academy of Engineering, and other disciplines. The project illustrates what a multidisciplinary, plan-led approach in an Irish context can deliver. We have provided a link to the project within the submission. There are previous Irish examples, such as Westport 2000, and the Dublin docklands planning scheme and SDZ. These projects had very good outcomes, but they should become the mainstream. At the moment, they are very much the exception.

We believe that delivering the clarity, certainty and consistency that the Bill intends will require a shift in focus from development management to forward planning, and this needs resources with the right skillsets. Architects' expertise is in the design and delivery of the built environment. Their expertise includes taking a holistic and three-dimensional approach to development, and to achieve the outcomes needed. There must be a multidisciplinary leadership that includes architects at senior levels within the process. The public sector has seen a diminution of the influence of architects over the last 20 years, and the position of city and county architects has been reduced, with some local authorities having no architects' department. This needs to be addressed, and local authorities empowered to work proactively on behalf of their communities.

We need to move to quality-focused development management and decision-making. RIAI members frequently encounter challenges arising at pre-planning, due to the lack of vision within the development plans in the first instance, and the lack of multidisciplinary engagement. This results in inadequate direction, and very often, despite significant costs in the development of detailed planning applications, they can conclude with an absolute refusal. This generates uncertainty, and each refusal undermines confidence within the system, discouraging investment and adding to the cost of homes. The pre-planning phase needs to be proactive, collaborative, and between the local authority, the applicant and the community.

In regard to the specifics of the Bill, the RIAI welcomes the provisions which are in line with delivering clarity, certainty and consistency. Specifically, we welcome the proposal to increase the duration of local authority development plans from six to ten years to create long-term visions, and to make more efficient use of resources. We welcome the proposal to create new categories of local area plans. Taken together, these proposals will help to move to a system which is plan-led and could provide better quality outcomes.

We support the deployment of new digital technologies within the planning process but these need to go beyond e-planning. We need to adopt technologies in gathering baseline data and the use of these to inform development plans and stakeholder engagement and to measure outcomes. The RIAI recommends that professional bodies such as the RIAI, the Irish Planning Institute, IPI, and the Royal Town Planning Institute, RTPI, would have a role in the promotion and assessment of new board members to An Bord Pleanála. The RIAI supports the proposal to strengthen the legal status of ministerial guidelines that help promote consistent implementation of planning law nationwide, achieving more certainty and consistency in decision-making. We support the statutory mandatory timelines, which could bring certainty to the consent process. However, we suggest that these timelines be nuanced to reflect the scale and complexity of applications. We believe that properly resourcing the system in a way that allows timelines to be met is preferable to the use of fines.

Delivery of housing is one of the greatest challenges facing the country. Before concluding, I would like to take the opportunity to mention a recent submission the RIAI made to the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage for a new category of low-rise medium-density housing. We believe that were guidelines brought in to bring forward this type of housing, it would increase supply of quality homes.

Our current housing standards, rooted in century-old guidance, are delivering low-density suburban housing enclaves, often with less than 30 units to the acre. There is an alternative. We are suggesting that this model of low-rise medium-density housing should be introduced as a priority by a new ministerial directive for national housing planning standards. Throughout Europe, there are many exceptional, high-quality examples of this type of housing development but virtually none in Ireland. We would be happy to provide the committee with more detail.

Finally, on behalf of the RIAI, I would like to thank the committee for the invitation to appear and discuss the Bill. We are engaged in a more detailed review of the content of the Bill and will be making a further submission.