Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Absolutely not. It does not reach into the decisions that they make. As I have explained and as we have discussed here, it ensures that there is an assessment of what the national policy is and whether it is consistent with that. Getting into whether or how one building blends into another or what site should be used with the other, is led by the development plan and the decisions made by planners. For the life of me, I cannot understand why we would remove an obligation within the process to ensure that assessments are being made in line with what the national planning statements would be on any given matter, such as the example I have used in the context of the sustainable development growth guidelines. Why would we say to a planner in legislation that he or she should be assessed as part of the process? To take density, for argument's sake, where we are looking to improve the use of density and better own-door developments such as this, we would be saying that it would be okay that we have published this but that it does not need to be part of the planner's assessment. That does not make any sense.