Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

-----but one would not expect them to be five years apart. We sought to bring in a practical measure to ensure this is workable. If two local authorities are each doing a development plan and a local area plan and will now do an urban plan, the additional workload involved will be considerable. We want to be certain it is practicable to do the plans and that we give them sufficient time to do so. We have opted for a five-year period because that is what is built into legislation. There will be a five-year review after ten years. We will see how it works and there is a mechanism for doing so.

To address Deputy O’Callaghan’s point, we cannot set time limits that are not practical for the two local authorities. Deputy O’Callaghan’s point was on not going ahead. We cannot have a situation where it is almost impossible to do so. It could be argued that we may be giving them too much time but five years is a natural cycle. We want to ensure these plans go ahead. They are not large in number. We believe they feed into an integrated model that includes the national planning framework and the regional plans. We want this integrated model and a key element of that is for two local authorities to do a co-ordinated area plan. The Deputies could argue that the date is too flexible but there is a defined date in the legislation for the review of development plans. Obviously, we want to fit those back in. It makes sense that co-ordinated area plans would be part of any review. From a practical perspective, for example, as part of a review of a development plan after five years, it would be a natural fit to have co-ordination between two development plans and a co-ordinated area plan between two local authorities. That is the logic behind that.