Mr. Aidan Sweeney:

I have the same difficulty as Deputy Sheehan in getting used to it now being the Planning and Development Act rather than a Bill. As for whether it will help with judicial reviews, there are certain parameters around reforms to the judicial review process but we do not feel it has gone far enough in the reviews recommended by the civil justice review. There are well-stepped measures to say the court should not be a consenting body or there for planning permission; it should just deal with matters of the law. The Kelly report recommends implementing the outstanding recommendations not taken in the planning and development Act. It wishes to allow an Coimisiún Pleanála to rectify the deficiencies and deal with them in a public way, and to allow them to draft decisions and different processes to correct the decisions that should not be done through the judicial review process. That is one of the key things we feel needs to be done.

With the planning and development Act itself, we feel there is an obligation right now on the Department of public expenditure and reform, as well as the line and sectoral Departments around transport, to ensure the clear strategic guidelines are published, whether that is for onshore or offshore wind, rail or the national aviation policy for Dublin Airport, for instance. It is about how we give the powers to the planning authorities to say this is what our Government wants for our public national policies and this is what we should base our judgments on. Those need to be in place. There are stronger powers in the Planning and Development Act to do that.

The national planning framework, the revised national planning framework and the subsequent revisions, and the regional spatial and economic strategies and development plans should be clear in particular areas that will then limit the roles where the grounds for objection could be. There needs to be an obligation to ensure there are clear structures in those plans. One of the things we say, unlike other countries, is that when the development process moves to ten-year development plans, if we slightly lengthen the public consultation period by making those plans at a local level, that would allow the Government and the public to define what is in the public good for each area. It would narrow the parameters. It would involve putting into the plan a clear definition, based on public submissions, of what would be good for the area. It would also help to rebalance the public good accruing from the process.

On the Planning and Development Act, in terms of infrastructure delivery right now, we believe creative thinking around exempted development regulations, which have now moved from primary to secondary legislation, could make a difference.