Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 23 February 2023

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government

General Scheme of the Planning and Development Bill 2022: Discussion (Resumed)

Mr. Gavin Lawlor:

Again, that is probably more like a one to two-year period but it is difficult. If one has just adopted a plan and it has only run for three years, one is not seeing very much as to how it is working properly. Perhaps a year is better than two years. The process has to be evidence-based. I return to what the RTPI has said about a set of agreed metrics, which are things one is measuring, and about how successful certain policies have been. It is then evidence-based where communities can see that if we are going to change a policy, they can ask why we are changing it. It may to get a different result because our ambition may be more housing, more factories or more offices in a particular area and that may not have worked. How do we move and what do we change?