Dr. Fred Logue:

Guidelines are guidelines and they are not detailed enough to determine individual applications. The problem that we had with the SHDs was that there was an attempt to impose guidelines that essentially would determine individual applications even if they materially contravened the development plan.

Again, there is nothing wrong with the approach per se. Obviously I agree that it would be good to have as much democratic oversight as possible but the challenge is to try to prevent an overreach or a centralising tendency in these guidelines. We are in a country that is growing. Traditionally Ireland did not have the local parish councils that the UK had when local government was established because our population was not dense enough.

It is ironic that as the population grows, our planning is being centralised, given that there are more people spread around the country. The thing is to try not to use these planning statements to impose centralised control over individual decisions. If that happens, that is where the tension arises. We still have the material contravention procedure which still has the problems that gave rise to the issues with the strategic housing development, SHDs and specific planning policy requirements, SPPRs. The devil will be in how it is implemented and not really the structure per se. Democratic oversight by the Oireachtas might be a way of constraining that kind of centralised tendency with these planning statements.