Emer Higgins (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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I thank the witnesses for attending and for sharing their expertise. It has been especially interesting to hear from the councillor representatives, given they represent almost 1,000 councillors, who cannot afford to take out the time to read this lengthy draft Bill. I thank them, therefore, for coming and putting their views on record.

A friend of mine was recently a member of the Dublin Citizens' Assembly, which related to proposals for a Dublin mayor. His major takeaway was that, having absorbed all the information presented to them, the powers of local councillors in Ireland are diminished when compared with those in local democracy systems elsewhere in the world. That is regrettable. Development plans are an example of this. I was a councillor for a decade and worked on two county development plans, and I did that in an era before the Office of the Planning Regulator. While that is a fantastic office that acts as a watchdog to ensure correct decisions in respect of zoning are being made, it has diminished councillors’ powers when it comes to making the final determination over what the development plan for the area and people they represent will look like.

I am interested to hear the witnesses' views on development plans. I am open to there being a tenure of ten years and I think that would make for good planning because there would at least be a timeframe in which development is more likely to happen. When development plans came back to me after six years, there was still residential zoning where they might have been a live planning application but nothing had happened. What concerns me are the points Councillors Shanahan and Killian made regarding that review having teeth and the need for material contraventions or amendments to be able to be initiated from elected members as well as the chief executive. Councillor Shanahan put it well when he said these are councillors' development plans and not those of the executives. What changes would we need to make in the Bill to satisfy those requirements?

Deputy McAuliffe spoke about the pressures on councillors when it comes to development plan decisions. What was the experience during any decisions that have been made online? Did the online dynamic have an impact on decision-making?

Councillor Fitzpatrick from AILG spoke about the rigid national and planning frameworks and that fed somewhat into what our guests from the CCMA said about the planning hierarchy. What do we need to do to make those frameworks more flexible, from a councillor's perspective, and to make the hierarchy clearer, from the CCMA's perspective?

On the joint area plans, I fully agree with what was said. This applies in my county with the City Edge project, where boundaries have to be crossed, so it makes sense. That the taking in charge process is being included in that is positive and I hope it will speed up matters. From the perspective of rural guidelines, that is something I am interested in. I am a Dublin Deputy but I represent a rural area too, so I will pass that feedback on to the Minister.

Most of all, I would like to hear feedback from our guests from AILG and LAMA regarding development plans. How should they work, what should be the duration and how could the review mechanism be built in to make them more councillor friendly? How can we ensure the decision-making can initiate from members as well as executives?