Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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The decision, in formal terms, rests with the planning authority, whether it is the local authority or the board. However, that is not the import of what the Minister is proposing, and this is why I go back to what the Irish Planning Institute has stated. In this regard, let me refer to a real case. For example, we had the mandatory ministerial guidelines on building heights whereby you could not have height limits within local authority areas. Of course, the problem was that local authorities did have height limits. Dublin City Council had 11 locations where one could go up to a particular height, and everywhere else was mid-rise or low-rise. The difficulty was when this was subject to legal challenge. The argument was that if there was a strategic development zone or if there were individual considerations of individual planning authorities concerning how the rule could apply at the specific location in the context of the surrounding environment, be it natural or residential, there might be a requirement in an individual planning decision, following the assessment of the application, for a height limit. If you were to rerun the same decision-making process in the case of there being no height limits – this relates to the question of the Chair, which is very important – the person or persons making the assessment, namely the planning officials in the planning authority or board, would be required to comply in an incredibly rigid way with, for example, a national policy statement on building heights irrespective of whether good planning would determine this was right in the given location and given the surrounding natural and built environment. What the Minister is doing is prescribing the scope for decision-making in the assessment process of the planning authority, and that is why the Irish Planning Institute is raising concerns about damaging the confidence of the public. Why is that the case? Somebody might want a really good quality high-density development and deserve support, but if it were overdensified and too high, there could be negative consequences entailing masts, etc. The flexibility in consenting decisions is being restricted and, in some cases, removed. Therefore, it is wholly inappropriate to extend beyond plan-making. The point is that national planning policy statements and guidelines should be about plan-making, and how the decisions are applied in each unique set of circumstances for each application should not be constrained in the way the Minister is doing. I know the Minister might not agree, but does he really disagree with the Irish Planning Institute when it tells him this is what he is doing?