Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

In speaking to the amendment, I have great sympathy with the point that we want planning decisions to by made in local authorities. That is why I said in the previous amendment that I particularly welcome this Bill. It is a fundamental delivery of our commitment in the programme for Government to restore the two-stage planning process. I do not want to rehearse the comments I gave in an earlier amendment. However, it is important that when we speak about these amendments, we acknowledge that what we have done here has restored to communities that ability to contribute.

One thing that we spoke about at length is the reasons people object. Height is one of those reasons. There are clearly people out there who are opposed to height in all cases. Many of our local authority members are not opposed to height in all cases and who have quite progressive views on height, where it is appropriate. For example, Dublin City Council had quite an advanced height strategy. Unfortunately, the ministerial guidelines prevented an upper height limit. That in effect eliminated the height strategy. If there is no upper height limit in any area, you cannot prioritise where you would like height. It was clear where local authority members wanted height. They wanted it in the docklands. They wanted it in places, such as in my own constituency in Ballymun, where we were trying to develop a town centre. When that upper height limit was removed from anywhere in the city, it resulted in us not being able to prioritise height. Unfortunately, we got height in inappropriate places.

I speak against the amendment for a different reason. That is because I worry that it would limit the Minister’s power to act in a way many Members in this House would like us to act. An example would be our decision, and another commitment the Minister made in the election, to roll back on the use of co-housing. Many people felt we did not want to see co-housing. As well as this, for example, the Minister gave an instruction to local authorities during the year to prevent student accommodation being turned into tourist or hotel accommodation. The Minister had these powers to direct local authorities on this. Many Members of this House saw this as a progressive move on housing. It saw us preventing something that would have decreased our supply. I worry that the deletion in this amendment may restrict the Minister’s powers to act in that way.

I appreciate the motivation behind this amendment. Perhaps it would be better to revisit those specific guidelines, rather than completely removing the Minister’s power to issue guidelines. As I say, we can trust local councillors. I believe we can. I believe we can ensure we have progressive height policies. However, I would not like to eliminate the Minister’s ability to be able to direct consistency in local authorities throughout the country, because it is important we have that consistency for the two examples I have given alone.

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