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

To go back to why we take witnesses from their day jobs and bring them in here to answer our questions, we are keen to try to explore ways to improve things. I acknowledge there is a lot of very positive information in what today's witnesses have shared with us, as well as some of the challenges, but this committee is useful only if we take these opportunities to inform ourselves. We try to raise constructive improvements with the Government.

With that in mind, I would be interested in all three organisations' views on how we can better co-ordinate the forward planning. Both ESB Networks and Irish Water have very considerable plans for planning and planning divisions. You have to go through the process of public consultation, you have to go through the regulator, etc. Obviously, we have our development plans and they are increasingly complex. There are commercial operations by individual landowners in respect of decisions to acquire land, to secure planning permission, etc. How can we, at a more efficient level, forward-plan that beyond individual developments and development applications? Do we need to look at some mechanism whereby, at a local authority level or at a regional, inter-local authority level, there is some mechanism to look five or ten years down the line to ask to what extent the different plans align? I fully understand that different organisations and utilities need to have their strategic view as to which bits of critical infrastructure are required, but are there ways of better forward planning? We talked about SDZs, and a really good example is the Clonburris SDZ, which is a really good master plan involving public and private land and it gets URDF funding. The critical infrastructure is going first and now the planning applications are going afterwards. That is in part possible because there is a landowners' management group, including the public and private sectors, that co-ordinates that. I am not saying it is not without its problems.

Does something like that exist at a local authority level? Should we be looking at some kind of structure, especially for big forward planning? That is my first question.

My second question is related. It is about learning from what works. Ms O'Dwyer mentioned Cherrywood; I mentioned Clonburris. Especially where there are large landholdings with multiple owners, do we need to try to find a nimble mechanism to ensure the same kind of collaborative planning and investment in infrastructure as we use in an strategic development zone, SDZ? Can that be applied in locations that are not SDZs to design out the disadvantage for the first landowners? Is there something similar? We will be looking at the planning Bill when it comes back in the autumn. We have other legislation around land value sharing and so on. Is there something we should consider?

My third question is connected. It is a small technical question. ESB Networks talks about 33 connections. Irish Water talks about 25 connections. Do Irish Water or ESB Networks know why there is a difference? For example, is it because some households that have ESB Networks connections are not connected to the public water system as they are connected to group water schemes or is there some delay between them? It is quite a big difference and the number of water connections is closer to the completion certificate data from the National Building Control and Market Surveillance Office last year, which was 23,000.

We hear a lot about delays because they come into the public domain. It does not mean they are large in number. If there are data on the number of connection applications that are delayed beyond the companies' timelines, the committee would like to hear about it now or later. In the few delays I have dealt with in my constituency, I have long argued that a protocol should be in place. Where there is a dispute between a public or private developer and a utility connector, a protocol should kick in. Often the people who are meant to move into the homes are the losers in this, that is either the purchasers or tenants whose allocation is delayed, often due to disputes they are not even aware of. Sometimes these disputes are caused by a third party, for example when there is an issue with a way leave. It is not always a dispute with one or other of the parties who are present. Is there some way to say that when there is a dispute, an agreed procedure will be used by all the players to resolve it? That would include the public who are affected. It would clean the issue up rather than allowing people to retract into silos and defend corporate positions rather than pursue an agreed approach. Will the witnesses let us know if something like that has been developed? I would be interested in hearing about it.