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

To emphasise Deputy McAuliffe's point, there was the census in 2016, the planning framework was created in 2018 and a series of development plan reviews are almost complete, with only a small number outstanding. There has been almost seven years between 2018 and 2024, when the NPF will be reviewed, and over recent years there has been widespread commentary, both within this House and from professional bodies in the development community, that the underlying assumptions of the NPF, in respect of population growth targets and, therefore, rising housing need and demand assessments and how that is worked into zoning, housing targets and so on, are fatally flawed. Under the current system, which required review halfway through the lifecycle of the planning framework, it is to happen every seven years, but it will be actually nine years from when that census was conducted. My fear with how this has been formulated is that given the default position will be ten years plus however long it takes to publish the census results, it could be 12 years.

All of this is meant to align the various series of plans but, in fact, it could just open further gaps between development plans, housing plans, housing need and demand assessments, census data and the NPF and NPF reviews, and that is before we have any consideration of pent-up demand, which is not captured in the census because it does not quantify that, which is one of the other big problems with the underlying assumptions of the current NPF. I think waiting until the second occurrence of the census is too long and thought needs to be given to doing it after each census, but moreover, not after the publication of the final report but as soon as the core data of the census becomes available. In that way, it could be determined whether the review were a substantive review because there was substantive new information or whether it simply confirmed that things were moving in the right direction. At the moment, there is a review of the NPF nine years after the census, whereas this will be 12 years plus, and I think demographic change is going to be much more unpredictable in the coming period, for all the reasons the Minister of State knows, than it has been heretofore.