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

Nobody on this side of the room or, indeed, in the Irish Planning Institute is suggesting that planners should not have regard to their development plans, spatial strategies, national planning framework or SPPRs. That is not the issue. I know what this is about. The Ronan Group submitted an application for a specific height for the Salesforce tower. This is a real-life case directly related to the purpose of this section. The Ronan Group put in the application for the Salesforce tower and sought to significantly breach the strategic development zone height cap on the north docks. The board approved the application in line with the SPPR brought in by the former Minister, Eoghan Murphy, which is the predecessor of the national planning policy statements. On the basis of proper planning and respect of the planning scheme. Dublin City Council took An Bord Pleanála to court and won its case. This section would allow the board, in the case of such a legal challenge, to say that the planner has a legal obligation when making the assessment to do it in line with the SPPR. Here is the problem with that. I am not making a judgment as to whether the decision relating to the Ronan Group, the board and the city council was right or wrong. That is a separate argument. The problem is that plans are not always internally coherent in all senses. There are certain tensions in the context of something as big as a national planning framework. If there is a development plan, there are certain tensions. It is the job of professional planners in individual instances who are trying to make sense of these rules and how they apply to a real world case to have flexibility. If too much flexibility is applied, a court will say to hang on a second and that planner X had a legal obligation under section 54(3)(n). The more I look at it, the more I realise this would have had an effect if it had been in place when Dublin City Council was in conflict with An Bord Pleanála with regard to Salesforce tower. I suspect the subsection originates not from a planner but, rather, from somebody with a legal mind who was considering how these legal battles play out in court. I am not suggesting there has been anything improper - people are entitled to provide legal advice - but it would have been to ensure that the decision of An Bord Pleanála's, rather than that of the planning authority, was on the right side of the court. The more I think about it, the more dangerous I realise it is. It is not that we are saying regard should not be had; it is that the national planning policy statements should inform plan making. Planners should make decisions on planning applications. This is probably one of the most dangerous parts of the Bill.