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:

If I can monopolise the conversation for a second, the Senator is absolutely right. We have always tried to engage not through the municipality but through our local community with development that is ongoing. We have a very good team of public representatives. I am lucky to live in a constituency that is gifted. Through that engagement, we tend to get development that is really good and everybody makes their money out of it. The real problem that has driven the fracture in planning is that when we had the great financial crash, there was no money. The only way we could build anything was through assetisation. That is the problem. The developer probably had no choice but to do the build-to-rent properties. You have to have everybody working on it together and understand everybody. If in that situation, even 10% of the units had been for sale, something could have come of it. There are so many pressures on everybody, including the developers, that it is really hard to control where it goes. It would be wonderful if we could.

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