Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 20 November 2018

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government

Impact of Brexit on Ireland's Housing Market: Discussion (Resumed)

11:00 am

Mr. Tom Phillips:

Nothing happened. In the UK, they have a system, the Harman report about the viability testing of local area plans. We do not do it in this country. For a long time, the planning system set aside the issue of economics and only looked at the social and physical side of it, but all three are legs of the same stool. We have to look at how we deliver housing and have an eye on the market because it informs how we should be doing policies, and the planning system has its eyes closed, to a degree, to the market. We need to see how we can make it viable and look at all these costs and levers and say, if we just reduced or omitted those for a while, what effect would it have?