Dáil debates

Wednesday, 20 January 2010

Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill 2009 [Seanad]: Second Stage (Resumed)

 

5:00 pm

Photo of Ciarán CuffeCiarán Cuffe (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)

In December last, at the time of the flooding, I was interrupted mid-stream, as it were. Since then, much water - and snow, ice, grit and meltwater besides - has flowed under the bridge. The vagaries of the weather and climate notwithstanding, a common theme to emerge is that proper planning is crucial to allow us to withstand the extremes of weather and climate. We have much to do to ensure people buy into the idea of proper planning and our planning authorities provide good models for development in their respective areas.

Over the past 30 years, through the boom years and beyond, the options in housing have been limited essentially to three, namely, a semi-detached house, an apartment or flat in the centre of a town or one-off house. The quality of design was poor, the quality of energy control was diabolical and little or nothing was done to improve building standards or the planning framework.

As I was saying before being interrupted by the Christmas recess, not only must we improve the quality of the county and city development plans, local area plans, regional planning guidelines and the national spatial strategy, we must join them together in a much more coherent and organised way. A local area plan should not be in conflict with the national spatial strategy or regional planning guidelines. While it may sound abstract to speak in these terms, we have had sufficient evidence in the past five or ten years of significant developments being built without rhyme or reason, other than padding developers' pockets. A substantial amount of the property which will fall into the hands of the National Asset Management Agency is indicative of the problem of bad planning or laissez-faire planning where county managers allowed people to build whatever and wherever they wanted. In response to this problem, the Minister, in this Bill, seeks to push the boat out by increasing standards in planning and, specifically, the zoning aspects of county and city development plans.

One of the positive features of the Bill is the requirement it imposes on city and county councils, irrespective of what stage their development plans have reached, to revisit the plan within a year to ensure it conforms to the core strategy. The core strategy is tight in that it poses the question as to what precisely is needed in the development plan in terms of housing, employment and social facilities. I expect planning to be much sharper and more focused as a result. Weather woes and their impact on communities over the past couple of months drew greater attention to the need to be much more careful about what we plan and where we plan it.

Before Christmas, I had a chat with one of my colleagues from the Fianna Fáil Party, Deputy Rory O'Hanlon, about a small town which I will not name. Residents were faced with the prospect of a major international food retailer seeking to build a large supermarket outside the town, rather than in its centre. The map I am holding shows a splodge of greenery with the town at its centre. The red marking, the site of the proposed development, is not in the town centre but outside it. The fear and concern of retailers in the town is that the old town centre will suffer once this large box development opens up beside the bypass on the edge of the town.

The problem I highlight, which is evident in almost every town, boils down to the decisions taken by city, town and county councillors during the development plan process. If one rezones every green field outside a town, one should not be surprised when big box retailers propose to build beside the motorway rather than in the town centre. The downside of this development is that businesses which have been the lifeblood of a town for generations will close down as a result of the car dominated planning policies which allow economies of scale to kill off town centres. We saw this process in England during the Thatcher era when an absence of planning resulted in people becoming much more car dependent. We have seen a similar trend in France in the past 30 years and we are seeing it again in Ireland much more recently. If ever there was an argument for being careful about what one zones and rezones, it is the example of small towns being killed off by a lack of planning and the failure to think through the consequences of councillors' actions in rezoning excessive amounts of land.

Within one year of the Bill becoming law, planning authorities must revisit their development plans and ensure they conform to the core strategy they must produce. This is a good development. One must look no further than my county, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, to see how a development plan is being formulated. I have significant problems with the actions of councillors who are increasing the amount of land they wish to rezone and raising the cap on the size of some shopping centres proposed or partially developed in the county. We have a choice between allowing more shops to be built on green field sites or ensuring the existing towns of Stillorgan, Dundrum and Dún Laoghaire are revitalised. If we continue to build big box developments on the outskirts of our towns and the edges of the M50 and south eastern motorway, the old towns of Dún Laoghaire, Dundrum, Stillorgan and Cherrywood will suffer.

I say to my colleagues across the Chamber in the Fine Gael Party and Labour Party as well as Independents that we must consider what type of a county we want to see in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown in the coming years. Perhaps Deputy Olivia Mitchell will have a good discussion with her colleagues on the county council about the type of planning they wish to see in the county. We face a stark choice between urban sprawl or consolidation. For my part, as a member of the Green Party, I believe we need consolidation on the periphery and outskirts of Dublin as we will otherwise become even more car dependent. This argument is not only theoretical but practical. It is also strong in terms of its social aspects because further urban sprawl will result in people without access to a car becoming remote from shops, pubs and, therefore, the lifeblood of their communities.

I attended a workshop this morning held under the auspices of the Dublin Transportation Office, which has been renamed the Dublin Transport Authority and subsequently subsumed into the National Transport Authority. As a result, we will have a new transport authority in Dublin. This embryonic organisation made a presentation in the Davenport Hotel, which noted that the transport demand of those living in the periphery of the greater Dublin area will be seven times greater than that of those who live near the centre of the city. This has been stunningly obvious to me for many years. One uses seven times as much energy for transport requirements if one lives in the rural hinterland compared to the city centre. This should concentrate the mind. We are not saying that people must live in Dublin city centre or Dún Laoghaire but in planning policy terms we should produce much better developments in town and city centres. We need to move away from the choices identified earlier of the small apartment, the semi-detached house or the one-off house. We must improve the build quality of those developments, improve the quality of design and give people more options.

All Deputies in this Chamber have travelled abroad and we have seen the gracious living in the centre of Amsterdam or Copenhagen and the good recent development one sees in parts of southern and northern Europe. We should look towards those models of development not in a prescriptive way, but in making it easier and giving people more choices. For far too long, people have been very restricted in their choices of where to live, shop, work or relax. Much of this was due to the overly strong influence of developers on the options available to people. The State should push the boat out to offer more options. This Bill does that and I am supportive of it.

I am dwelling particularly on the core strategy and the need to re-examine the zonings that were too flaithiúlach during the Celtic tiger years. The recession has concentrated our minds on the kind of Ireland we want to have. Suburban sprawl is not the way forward. High-quality, mixed-use development will make for better communities, which is what I want to support. Many other aspects of this Bill are worthy of support. I was heartened by the discussion with Deputy O'Hanlon, who starkly illustrated the choices in counties around Ireland. If we rezone every last patch of land, we should not be surprised if the big box supermarkets move to the periphery and kill off town centres. Choices must be made in my area, Dún Laoghaire, to ensure the county town of Dún Laoghaire is revitalised. This Bill will give us the toolkit to make the changes that will make Ireland more sustainable in the best interests of our communities.

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