John Cummins (Waterford, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I join the Minister in thanking the Housing Commission for its work. I commend each member of the commission on their efforts by any objective measure. The commission's report is an impressive piece of work and is having the intended impact on informing the policy debate and providing innovative ideas and solutions to the challenges we collectively face in the housing space.

The Minister, Deputy Browne, has set out the thrust of the report and the key areas of focus of the Government's work that are being informed by the report. I intend to speak about the intersection of the commission's report and the reform of our planning system. The commission's work ran concurrently with a significant body of work to consolidate planning legislation and update the planning policy framework. Many of the ongoing areas of reform under way reflect the areas of interest of the commission. I will highlight progress on some of the key reforms in train to ensure the planning system can continue to support the delivery of housing across the country.

The Planning and Development Act 2024 was signed into law last October. It followed a complete fitness check of the Planning and Development Act 2000 to identify the necessary reforms required to deliver the optimum planning system to meet the challenges we will face in the coming decades. The Act will bring greater consistency, clarity and certainty to the planning system. It will build on and enhance the existing plan-led approach to development whereby the national planning framework and the new national planning statements will set a very clear policy direction to reflect the Government's priorities for the future development of the country.

This will in turn be reflected in regional strategies and local development plans, the latter being extended to ten years to allow for a more strategic planning approach at local level.

Enhanced policy clarity will inform decision-making on the ground with greater certainty on expected outcomes for those seeking to undertake development, as well as for communities and interested parties. The Act will also introduce statutory timelines for decision-making and the streamlining of judicial review processes to ensure that delays will be reduced and investment decisions can be made with an expectation of when a decision on a planning application may be forthcoming.

Under the Act, An Bord Pleanála will be renamed an coimisiún pleanála and its organisational structure is being changed to better meet its challenges and workload. In addition, a new advisory board will be introduced to the Office of the Planning Regulator. The commencement of the Act is a task of considerable scale and complexity and is a key priority of this Government. It will be commenced on a phased basis to facilitate the transition from the arrangements under the current Act to those under the new Act. While I can appreciate the sense of urgency to commence the Act, we must ensure that the planning system continues to function efficiently and effectively while transition is under way and that those engaging with the system, including within the construction sector, have a line of sight in terms of when key changes will come into play.

My Department has also been engaged since 2023 in the process of revising the national planning framework, NPF, to ensure that the planning policy framework is up to date and reflects the Government's priority objectives, particularly in relation to housing, climate change and infrastructure. The final draft revised NPF is now ready for approval by Government. Subject to that approval, it will be introduced into the Houses of the Oireachtas for final approval. The revised NPF will provide the basis for the review and updating of regional, spatial and economic strategies and local authority development plans to reflect matters such as updated housing figures, projected jobs growth and renewable energy capacity allocations, including through the zoning of land for residential, employment and a range of other purposes.

The revised NPF sets out a need to plan for the delivery of approximately 50,000 additional homes per annum every year until 2040. The key next step is to discuss the spatial distribution of housing needs through updated planned housing requirements on a local authority by local authority basis. This will enable local authorities to zone more land for housing purposes to address emerging need and demand. It will also enable strategic planning for transport-orientated development in and around our five cities to support the delivery of new sustainable communities at brownfield and greenfield locations along existing or planned high-capacity public transport corridors. Given the urgency and scale of the challenge facing us, it is essential that the updated housing requirements can be incorporated into the planning process and system as quickly as possible. As such, it is intended that local authorities will be required to update their development plans in line with a clear policy direction and accompanying methodology.

The planning system must also be properly resourced with the requisite skill sets in place. New legislation with statutory decision-making timelines, the need to review and update development plans, as well as the important role the planning system has in tackling land activation, vacancy and dereliction, all bring this need into sharp focus. Recognising this, the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, published a ministerial action plan for planning resources last year. This action plan provides a detailed roadmap to increase the pool of planning and related expertise needed to ensure the planning system is fit for future needs. These actions are already being progressed and will be driven by a steering group put in place to oversee the plan's implementation. The action plan, supported by recent investment in ring-fenced resources for local authority planning staff, prioritises the staffing of the local government sector, in particular. The positive impact of increased resources is already visible within An Bord Pleanála. This has brought about significant improvements in performance since the Government investment in the doubling of resources in the organisation. Of course, we need to see the remaining backlog cleared by the board as urgently as possible.

Sanction has been granted since October 2023 for an additional 213 permanent full-time posts in local authority planning departments. My Department is continuing to engage with the local government sector regarding the next phase of staffing.

Earlier this month, my Department made a joint submission, with the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications, the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science and the Irish Planning Institute to request the inclusion of the occupation of town planning officer on the critical skills occupation list. The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment is considering this request.

As the Minister rightly pointed out, there has been a step change in delivery in recent years, despite the disappointing dip in completions that was experienced in 2024. It is clear that while we experienced a 4.6% increase in the delivery of scheme houses, we simultaneously saw a reduction of 24% in apartment completions. This clearly impacts the 2024 output. We will need to focus on enabling the delivery of apartments again, including a focus on reversing the retrenchment of institutional capacity which has provided the funding for much of the apartments built in our cities in recent times, while also investing in the Land Development Agency, LDA, to unlock apartments at scale, which is what is in its pipeline.

The immediate focus of Government is on using all levers at our disposal to build on the increase in supply seen during the term of Housing for All and to strive to reach the credible and ambitious target of delivering more than 300,000 new homes by 2030. The planning system will play an integral role in these efforts to achieve our targets and our focus will be on implementing the reforms I have set out and leaving no stone unturned in seeking additional levers within the planning system to aid these efforts to provide housing options to persons such as those I outlined last week.

I congratulate the commission again on the work it has done and the impact it is clearly having an Government thinking. There is much alignment with the planning reform under way and the views of the commission. We will continue to consult the commission's report as we consider other opportunities to realise our ambitions on housing, which I know we all share across this Chamber.

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