Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change) | Oireachtas source

I am glad the Government has brought forward a Bill to make our planning system clearer in the aftermath of repeated calls from the Opposition at the committee on housing and by interest groups. I echo my fellow Deputies' concerns over the lack of: a proper explanatory memorandum for the Bill; adequate speaking time on the third-largest Bill in the State's history; and time for Members to read through the 700 pages plus of the Bill before it came into the House. I have not had the opportunity to sit down and go through the Bill.

The issue I want to raise, which was the subject of a Private Members' motion I tabled earlier in the year, is community gain for areas in which large-scale developments are being built. In my constituency, the City Edge Project will bring in 40,000-plus new residents over the next 50 years. On the South Circular Road, we will see hundreds of new units built over the next decade. In Drimnagh, with a population of over 12,500 people, the next decade will see the development of at least eight large brownfield sites. This will lead to 10,000 new housing units being built and more than double the population occupying the same physical space. I welcome these developments but I note that we must have more three and four-bedroom properties. We are only getting studios and one and two-bedroom properties.

I represent a constituency with a deep housing need. In many ways, it is at the forefront of the housing crisis. There is a need to ensure that the communities and areas affected by large-scale development are compensated for the changes in their areas and assured there will be no impact on the availability of services. I welcome the recent news that Drimnagh will receive funds for the new Crumlin and Drimnagh library at the old Ardscoil Éanna site, at a cost of €10 million, and for new changing rooms in Brickfield Park, at a cost of €2.5 million. The community has spent years fighting for both of these developments and I congratulate everybody involved in making this happen. Out of the €12.5 million involved in these two projects, all but €500,000 will come from development levies. These are two welcome new developments but they are not enough for an area in which the population is going to double over the next decade.

Dynamic Drimnagh produced a development plan for the area in 2021. It estimates that from the eight brownfield sites I mentioned earlier, there will be €63.576 million in development levies raised and a further €30.21 million brought in from another six sites. That is nearly €100 million in levies across 14 sites alone. These are massive numbers. For communities facing huge changes and big increases in population, the money involved needs to be invested in community gain. We need guarantees that the levies raised in local areas will be used to give those areas greater local services, resources and amenities. People need to see clear public planning for the provision of school places, primary healthcare and other public services in areas experiencing massive growth.

This is a Bill written for developers. The submission on this Bill by Community Law and Mediation and Environmental Justice Network Ireland to the committee on housing states:

The Bill attempts to fulfil promises made in the Program for Government and appease construction and property industry lobby groups who have long complained that excessively bureaucratic processes, over-regulation, restrictive nature protections and “NIMBYs” or “objectors” stymie development in Ireland.

What has really stymied development and planning in Ireland is not the burden on the construction sector but the burden being put on communities facing huge changes in population with no commensurate changes in public services or community resources. This Bill is a chance to get it right. Let communities keep the money or a red-circle piece of it, for example, 30% or 40%. Let them keep it in their areas to generate levies and institute development plans so that local communities gain services and resources, rather than losing out.

The submission from Community Law and Mediation and Environmental Justice Network Ireland also states:

... the narrative accepted by everyone from pundits, politicians to pedagogues, that “objectors” and judicial review are preventing the country from advancing on a variety of targets, from solving the housing crisis to tackling climate change, has been repeated so often that it has become axiomatic. It also has the appeal of “common sense” and as everyone knows someone who has fallen foul of the planning system in Ireland, chimes with people’s anecdotal experience. An examination of available figures quickly shows that the evidence does not support this contention and thus a core rationale underlying the Bill (i.e. too much judicial review) does not bear up to scrutiny.

The number of judicial review actions has remained relatively steady since 2012, ranging between 500 and 600. This is a tiny percentage of the around 40,000 planning applications made in 2021 and a fraction of the annual 6,000 to 8,000 applications denied for invalidity. Of the SHD judicial reviews taken, around 75% are successful, meaning the majority are in no way frivolous or unjustified. This contextualises the further restrictions being placed on residents' associations by the Bill. They require a formal constitution and a two thirds majority to take any decision. The scrapping of no foal, no fee, and for what? This will not bear a dramatic increase in planning approvals. A tiny percentage of applications are the subject of judicial review. Of that tiny percentage, the vast majority are successful. There is no point to these changes bar to restrict residents' associations from taking justified judicial reviews. The numbers are clear; it will have no real effect on approvals and it would not have a dramatic impact on housing builds. It will simply restrict people's ability to take action on inappropriate or improper development, as they see it, in their areas. If this Bill was not passed, they would, in the vast majority of cases, be successful in doing so.

I want to make the following point about another area of planning and I ask the Minister of State to comment on it. I am involved in the regeneration of Dolphin House. I received a letter from Dolphin House Community Development Association in recent days saying that Dolphin House is a community that lives in 70-year-old apartment blocks that are rapidly deteriorating, with intolerable living conditions for many families. Dolphin House was promised regeneration between 15 and 20 years ago and that regeneration is completely stuck now. Phase 1 was completed and a senior citizen complex was completed after years of effort but nothing has happened for nearly four years. That is the case even though a master plan was agreed that would provide 600 units of accommodation, even though they are shovel-ready sites that are ready to build on. The association said it had met Ministers frequently and that again and again they had been told that the money is there to complete the regeneration. It has not happened, however and it will not happen for many years to come, while the living conditions of the majority of this community continue to get worse.

Dolphin House Community Development Association has said that it has been supplied with a chart demonstrating the process that must be undertaken before it can even apply for planning permission. This involves 25 different steps and there will be a further 16 steps before the project can move from planning to the beginning of construction. With the best will in the world, no new homes will be built on this site before 2031. The association went on to say that it has established that there are significant structural and management changes within the city council, which effectively mean that all work has ground to a halt. They say they understand that some preliminary work has been done on some of the processes but that they have yet to meet any team that might have been formed. They say they had no sight of an environmental impact assessment and that if work has begun on a strategic assessment report, the regeneration board has not been given any tangible information or sense of progress. The association goes on to say that this is not just unacceptable but that it is crazy.

There is one primary reason for this; the planning and decision-making process. Due to the size of the outstanding project, apparently it must be conducted under Part 10 of the Planning and Development Act 2000, with the cumbersome set of steps that I mentioned involved. The association goes on to say that it is asking the Government to agree with it and to insist to Dublin City Council that the available sites within Dolphin House, which could accommodate up to 200 high-quality homes, should be developed immediately under Part 8 of the planning process. That would speed the process up immeasurably, without breaching any requirements on property, propriety or planning. I ask the Minister to take that on board. There we have a site that is shovel-ready and ready to go and it looks like it will take another ten years before anything else can be built on that site, and we have been waiting since 2015.

This Bill needs much work and a lot more debate. I hope the Government gives us the time and ability to properly debate and amend it before it passes. That should include a public consultation on the Bill.

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