Mr. Paul Hogan:

It is important to point out that the decision today provides a degree of clarity for anyone involved in land, building and housing. It does move things on. It points to the general direction for the future. It enables an incoming government to address the MPF relatively quickly should it wish to do so.

It is important to say that there probably will be a need for more zoned land because we are looking at bigger targets over a longer period in every case for county development plans now that the Planning Act has been enacted and will soon be commenced, or certainly next year. There is a cascade through the planning system from finalisation of the national planning framework through the regional strategies to the local county development plans. There is time for most county development plans because the current six-year plans do not start to run out for the bulk of local authorities until 2026 or 2027 or thereabouts. Obviously they will have to start work in some cases before that. One of the items that the Planning and Development Act includes is an ability for expedited changes to be given effect so there may be instances where there is a need for certain things to be done more quickly. I suggest, without any specific identification of locations, that if there is a situation where a clear level of demand is identified for an area and there is patently not enough zoned land, it may be that the Minister could issue some sort of expedited instruction – I am not sure if the term is a direction – to the local authority to consider zoning more land. Zoning is not the only means or source of scope for housing. People are obviously very interested in that but there are also very significant objectives in the MPF and other documents with regard to vacancy, re-use of existing brownfield sites, transport and intensification of use. There is a lot of scope for further consideration that the planning system will look at.