Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 7 March 2023

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government

General Scheme of the Planning and Development Bill 2022: Discussion (Resumed)

Mr. Robin Mandal:

You have to tread quite carefully around this. You have to come to the table on the premise that nobody is acting in any ultra viresfashion and that everybody is working with the best intention. I think we have seen the danger. The danger is that the Minister makes a decision, on whose advice I am not exactly sure. I was in a position at one point where there was an issue about Dublin City Council having apartment sizes that were too large and too highly specified for the industry to be able to build. That brought in the first specific planning policy requirement, SPPR. It is those SPPRs that we now see as being failures. The co-living build-to-rent has gone, thank goodness. That is where the Minister begins to undermine the planning system through centralised power. That is where the issue is. It is not that the Minister is doing it to annoy everybody. It is not that the Minister is being bribed or has been overly influenced. It is that when power is centralised, it inevitably becomes harder to control, which is what Mahon saw very clearly. There has to be a balance. I do not have any easy answers.

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