Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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I want to try to reassure members. I spend quite a lot of time travelling to different parts of the country to speak to councils on this issue and many others. To be clear, we are not bypassing local authorities . The process will be that a developer who wants to develop more than 100 houses, or more than 200 student accommodation units, will have an informal consultation with local authorities for a two or three-week period before the formal statutory pre-planning consultation begins . However, during that nine week statutory period there is a requirement for management and planning authorities to brief councillors. We actually made amendments in the Seanad to respond to concerns Senators had to ensure that councillors were involved in that process. At the end of the nine week process the views of councillors can be reflected in the manager's report. Local authorities can then make a recommendation on whether or not they think an application should be granted. They can also make recommendations on conditions that should or should not go with that planning application.

An Bord Pleanála will be involved with the local authority in that statutory nine week period to make sure it understands the intricacies of some of the local issues. There is a serious statutory process underway for a formal pre-planning consultation which is not there at the moment. It is a very informal process at the moment, with no timelines. In effect, there is a very serious look at the planning application and there is a recommendation made at the end of it. It is not a formal planning decision, it is a recommendation by the local authority. The planning application then goes on to An Bord Pleanála for the 16 week assessment which includes taking account of the recommendation. An Bord Pleanála then makes a decision.

There is an idea that the process is by-passing local authorities but that is not the way it is going to work. We have changed the language, through amendment, to reinforce the point that even though councillors do not make planning decisions they certainly have a right to know the detail of what is going on and they have a right to make comment on it. Planners at local government level will be able to put a detailed report together which will then get full consideration when An Bord Pleanála gets the formal planning application. We have spent a long time with An Bord Pleanála to make sure it will be properly resourced to do that through a new specific housing unit within An Bord Pleanála that has been set up for this purpose. It is a robust process that will have learnt lessons from the past and will make sound planning decisions. It will have much more predictability, to use a term from today, in getting a decision within a certain timeline.