Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I will be brief. I second the series of concerns raised by previous speakers and will express some other concerns. I understand from the consultation process on the national planning framework and from hearing the Minister talk about it that we are looking to planning in a different way. Rather than the centralised, top-down national spatial plan we would perhaps go to our cities or regions and say, will you come back with your vision as to how you will develop and the key projects that need to be advanced in cities particularly, and I hope this would be with an objective of moving back into the centre of cities. As Deputy Wallace said yesterday, that is not easy. Getting that right is different from putting semi-detached houses on a greenfield site on the edge of town. It is a difficult and more complex issue to regenerate areas, bring life back into them, get higher density and at the same time get high quality development.

The real concern I have is that in this part of the Bill we are going in the opposite direction. We are weakening local government. We are saying it will not be the key planning decision maker but that it will go to a centralised An Bord Pleanála system. There is a fundamental contradiction in the broad policy approach between what I see happening in the national planning framework, as I understand it, and what we are doing in this legislation.

I am always impressed with the Dublin city architect, Ali Grehan. She has a very good sense of how, in getting good development, it is about getting the public realm right. If we look at the applications in terms of the building fabric or within the particular enclosure, and if we just go to An Bord Pleanála and not centrally involve the local authorities, how will we get that integrated planning right? It is about the local park, the local playground, making sure that local transport considerations are integrated and that water and waste services are integrated effectively. In terms of energy, it is about moving towards district heating and doing various systems to ensure this development of 100 more units has to connect in to the local community, environment and infrastructure that comes with building high quality density homes, particularly within city centres.

We all want to see the number of housing developments increase but I am concerned that we will end up with higher numbers and losing on quality. That is a valid concern. It is late. We all spoke about this on Second Stage so I will not repeat it because we will probably not change the Minister's mind on it but if he proceeds with this measure, we should review it. The Minister said earlier that it is open to review. We should review it and if there is a real concern that the quality is starting to suffer, that we are not getting high quality development but rather opting for more out of town centres because it is easier to get the planning done whereas it is too difficult to get the high quality, dense, city centre and suburban planning done, we should reverse engines on this very quickly because I am concerned that it is a step in the wrong direction for planning in our country.

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