Mr. Robin Mandal:

It is an issue we have to tread very lightly on because the whole notion of the independence of the board and, I hope, of the commission, and the regulator underpin citizens' belief in the system. That belief, as the Senator knows, has been grossly challenged through the board. All that trust has sort of disappeared. I will give an example of mission creep. The Mahon tribunal, which led to the institution of the Office of the Planning Regulator, was primarily against corruption. It was also primarily addressing the issues of ministerial power and influence. That has been somewhat lost in the establishment of the Office of the Planning Regulator. I will cite one example, which is done and dusted, so nothing I say will make any difference. As a practising architect, it used to drive me mad. In Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, there was zero-zero zoning, which meant you could not put anything new in that area. The Vico Road was zero-zero. That meant there could be no more houses. The regulator decided that was not in accordance with national policy.

He wrote to the planning authority demanding that it remove it. It refused to remove it and it went into the development plan. The regulator then wrote to the Minister and got a directive to have it removed. That is completely irrelevant to proper planning and sustainable development. It is completely irrelevant to managing the planning system the way Flood and Mahon would have seen it. It is not necessarily bad mission creep but it is mission creep. It is making it more difficult for people to engage with the system. That is a very small one.

There is another case in Dún Laoghaire and there are judicial reviews going on in Dublin led by developers around the issue of build-to-rent, the proportion of build-to-rent and all that sort of stuff. There seems to be no acceptance within the Department that there are differences in different areas. Vico Road is unique in the world. Let them have their zero-zero zoning, even if it drives people like me mad and drives the developer mad. It is important that these local differences are there. That is where I see the mission creep. I feel very uncomfortable talking about institutions in this fashion but somebody has to.