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

It is always useful to think of the UDZs in real examples. I am a fan of SDZs. Mr. Hogan and I first met at the early stages of the Clonburris SDZ. Is the UDZ another way of doing very large 3D master planning? We have the City Edge Project. There is lots of work. Is the notion behind the UDZ to give something like the City Edge Project between Dublin City Council and South Dublin County Council a more formal framework? When the Irish Planning Institute originally floated the idea of UDZs, I got the impression it was a more flexible instrument in that it could apply to big, medium or small sites, that it would not take as long or be as cumbersome, and that it could be a valuable tool, especially in Dublin city and the parts of the suburbs where we want compact growth and to translate brownfield sites into mixed use residential, commercial and amenity uses. Separate to the process, which the general scheme outlines well, what will this planning scheme apply to?

In the drafting of the general scheme, what were the witnesses thinking in terms of practical examples or hypotheticals?