Mr. Philip Jones:

We looked at the regulatory impact assessment document the Department provided which stated that many existing SDZs have not developed in a timely manner as originally envisaged. There is no mention of the successful ones, such as Grangegorman and Adamstown, where building has been going on for quite some time quite successfully. It is not clear whether the problem is because of the SDZ legislation, which the Department is trying to change, or whether there are other factors such as the fact we had a crash. Some of the SDZs were never developed, possibly because there was not the opportunity to do so or there might not have been any demand. In my old job I was the inspector dealing with Clonburris, which is one of the SDZs. The SDZ scheme went through and most people thought it was great idea, but nothing happened. Was that because of market and economic circumstances changing rather than because of some flaw in the SDZ legislation? There is nothing in the regulatory impact assessment the Department provided to indicate which of those it was. Almost like we might say not to throw out the baby with the bath water, what is wrong with SDZs that a slight change to the legislation could not solve rather than coming up with an entirely new UDZ while leaving, as I think the Department intends, the existing SDZs in place? One of the questions might be, why change it?

On the other hand, the one change for which the reason is evident is the idea that it would come from the local authority development plans. That is certainly welcome because the elected members decide on the areas. In the current legislation it is decided at Cabinet level and effectively imposed on local authorities. We are all in favour of that change. Subsidiarity is an important principle of planning. The question is whether a lot of changes to the legislation are needed. Could it not have be done more simply? I listened to the recording of the meeting with the Department last week. It may be that it is talking about brownfield lands being zoned as UDZs, in which case perhaps SDZs should be continued basically for greenfield sites and UDZs should apply to brownfield sites. However, for some reason, it seems more as though the Department does not like SDZs and wants something new. The reason is not clear.