Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State's comments about the regional, spatial and economic strategy, as well as the involvement of Fingal and Dublin city councils. As the Minister of State knows, many times over the past two decades I asked successive Ministers responsible for environmental matters and taoisigh to make an order to declare the north and south fringe a strategic development zone to ensure some basic level of consultation with residents and citizens of Dublin Bay North. I specifically remember doing so with a former Taoiseach, Mr. Brian Cowen, and a former Minister, Mr. John Gormley. On my own proposal as a Dublin city councillor in 2005, then city manager Mr. John Fitzgerald finally established the north fringe forum, which has generally met quarterly since. It lacks the statutory powers of a strategic development zone to enforce stakeholder and developer engagement. I believe that as part of his review of planning in the north and south fringe, the planning regulator should also examine why the north and south fringe never received strategic development zone status. What was the reason for it?

As I indicated in my earlier speech, homes are desperately needed in Dublin Bay North, where approximately 7,000 households are waiting to be rehoused on the Dublin City Council side and up to 2,000 are waiting across the DART line in the Howth and Malahide housing area of Fingal County Council. In the Part V documents for the major plan that has now gone in, fewer than 200 apartments are to be allocated for social housing. Astonishingly, no fewer than 678 units of 1,030 apartments in the strategic housing development section 1 are build-to-rent units, and 1,130 apartments in the whole development are build-to-rent units. What is the plan in this regard?

The Downey planning reports for Gannon Properties list 26 major planning applications and a remarkable 126 applications, mostly made from Gannon companies, for the Clongriffin district of the north fringe since the turn of the century. Many of these applications were never followed through to construction, of course, and there is still extant planning permission for several areas of the current planning applications. That is why even a decade ago I called on Dublin City Council and Fingal County Council to establish a clear five-to-seven year planning and construction timetable so that the urgently required infrastructure could be built. The blizzard of unbuilt projects with planning permission, the history of land hoarding and the failure to provide essential social and commercial services for a district that is expected to have an ultimate population of more than 50,000 should now be examined in what might be the first major and urgent review by the new planning regulator.

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