Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I will go through each of the issues. I am not clear what, if anything, the Minister of State is proposing in respect of a CPO. He confirmed to us what we already knew, that what was in the Bill was broadly a restatement of what was there previously. That does not address the two key problems, namely, the CPO process is too long and too expensive. In many cases, a public agency does not just pay market value, but also a premium, and that is to leave aside the time it takes to progress a CPO. I liked one of the innovations in the urban development zone general scheme that allowed undeveloped land to be bought at a discount. It was the market value minus the land value sharing tax, if I understood it right, although there is an argument to go further than that. Has the Government any plans to introduce legislation on reforming CPOs between now and the end of its term? That is vital if we are to make it easier and lower risk for our local authorities to acquire vacant and derelict properties, something that has been a significant issue for almost all members of this committee, Government and Opposition alike. If the Minister of State set out what the Government planned to do in this regard, I would appreciate it. At least we know that land value sharing will be dealt with on the other side of the local elections, which is probably the primary reason it was taken out of this Bill. That is for another forum, though.

The Minister of State’s response on the review of Traveller accommodation was disappointing. My question was specifically on the planning-related elements in part B of the report. I am not aware of any of those being progressed, as the implementation group does not deal with issues of legislation, only with matters within its remit. Please, correct me if I am wrong. I have to give Deputy English credit for being so forthcoming in ensuring there was a report with sufficient independence to make strong recommendations. Many of us were nervous about the recommendations on taking powers away from elected members, even temporarily, to address the scandalous lack of appropriate Traveller accommodation, but the Fianna Fáil members and I took a view at the end that, in the absence of any better proposal, we would support the expert group’s recommendations. Unless these planning elements are enshrined in legislation, though, nothing will change in the advancement of adequate accommodation for Travellers. I wish to press the Minister of State on this.

Regarding carbon, let us be clear. Alongside building control and public procurement, the planning system has an integral role to play. The Minister of State is right about us needing to make changes to building controls to ensure that we can make greater use of timber and timber-based products above two storeys or 10 m. Right now, there are two types of cement in Ireland – a high-carbon dirty cement and a lower carbon cement that has approximately 50% lower emissions. Both are readily available and the same price. If I submit a planning application for a project that is predominantly concrete based, though, there is nothing in the planning system that allows a planning authority to say as part of its consideration of the planning grant that it would like to know whether I am using higher or lower carbon cement. There is nothing in our planning system that allows a local authority to condition or refuse a grant of planning on the grounds of using higher carbon, dirtier materials despite the fact that there is an equivalent material available at the same price with just 50% of the embodied carbon content. That makes no sense whatsoever. While there is a move towards an EU taxonomy so that there is an agreed mechanism for counting these elements, measures can be taken in the interim to be able to quantify those. Therefore, if our planning system is empowered to include such assessments in its decision-making on applications, we could be much further along. There should not be a planning application granted, particularly for public utilities, which use cement heavily, whose consideration does not insist on the use of lower carbon cement.

Likewise, there is a role for public procurement. Deputy O’Callaghan made a case about demolition. Where people want to demolish a building, they should first have to demonstrate through a demolition audit at the planning stage why demolition is the correct option and more appropriate than a reuse of the existing structure. Our local authorities should be empowered to require or request those and refuse a grant of permission or place conditions on it to maintain all or portions of the stock. Likewise, when permission for demolition is granted, a planning authority should be able to attach a condition to the grant of planning that the material lifted from the demolition site does not just go into landfill, but is appropriately reused, as per the circular economy legislation that the Minister of State’s party colleague steered through the Houses the year before last.

The idea that there is not a role for planning legislation or that we cannot start making the changes to our legislation in advance or in parallel with changes to building controls or public procurement makes no sense. Given how long it takes to get substantive planning reform and that we must reduce our embodied carbon in the built environment – I do not know what is in the Government’s legally binding climate action plan, but let us say it is 50% by 2030 – it is remarkable that the Bill does not cover these issues. The Minister of State’s answer seems to not understand the role that planning and planning reform have in tackling these issues. It is not as if this is the first time we have said it to him. Our committee held hearings, the relevant officials from the Department of the environment were here, and experts from the Irish Green Building Council, the industry and professional bodies appeared before us. This Bill is where it should be. Will it be in separate legislation? Is the general scheme of that legislation going to be published in 2024, 2025 or 2026? The Minister of State knows as well as I do that there is an urgency in addressing this matter. In our public debate on the climate, we rightly spend a great deal of time talking about energy, transport and agriculture. Embodied carbon in the built environment is one of the big four, yet it is virtually absent from the public debate and this Bill.

I wish to press the Minister of State more on the issues that Deputy O’Callaghan and I have raised and on when the Department intends to grapple with them from a primary legislative point of view.