Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 16 May 2023

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government

General Scheme of the Land Value Sharing and Urban Development Zones Bill 2022: Discussion (Resumed)

Dr. Se?n O'Leary:

From memory, I think it was a combination of that master planning approach that Mr. Keran mentioned and what Mr. Jones has discussed about empowering local authorities to create a vision for strategically important sites. Perhaps it was an SDZ-minus, or something like that. We envisaged that the scale would be different but also that the local authority would have done the site assembly work that was discussed. There are also considerations around services, access and things like that. From memory, it related to the local authority being able to take a more strategic approach to things such as access and encouraging the role of Uisce Éireann and things like that. There are various models, but perhaps there is an element of trying to limit the number of acronyms we have and not creating further confusion but instead focusing on the principle, which I think is sound. We need to avoid making implementation so complicated that people are left wondering what is happening next door to them, whether as part of an SDZ or UDZ framework or whatever. That is broadly the point. The principle is sound. The scale of it, the time that goes into it and the skills that are needed is where the issue arises. We must consider whether the two things can live independently. That goes back to why this needs to be knitted into the final Bill.

The Deputy asked another question.