Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The 2002 national spatial strategy, NSS, was Ireland’s first national strategic spatial planning framework. It aimed to provide the spatial vision and principles to achieve a better balance of social, economic and physical development and population growth between regions through the co-ordinated development of nine gateway cities and towns and nine hub towns, together with complementary policies to activate the potential for lasting economic development in their hinterlands and wider regions.

While the existing NSS remains in place, I and my colleague the Minister, Deputy Hogan, established in August 2013 a successor national spatial strategy scoping group, comprising three experts with extensive experience of spatial planning and economic and social development, to prepare a short scoping report on the development of a new national planning framework to replace the current NSS.

I received the experts’ scoping report earlier this year and I intend to bring proposals to Government shortly on the road map to develop a new national planning framework that will take account, inter alia, of the significantly changed economic circumstances the country now faces with a view to contributing to sustainable national recovery. The new national planning framework is expected to be finalised by the end of 2015.

See this speech in context