Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)

I will be sharing time with my colleague, Deputy McGuinness.

Statutory planning frameworks are enormously important. They not only set out a clear and legally defined basis for the entire hierarchy of plans, including the regional plans, the city and county development plans and local area plans, but they also provide a long-term strategic framework for investment and delivery of much-needed infrastructure and for housing. Getting it right is crucial and getting it wrong is more than damaging. In order to get the plan right, the process has to be got right. It gives me no pleasure to say that, having been through the previous national planning framework process, I believe the Government has made a number of mistakes in the process, which, unfortunately, is impacting the quality of the plan in front of us. The consultation period over the summer last year was too short. We had written to the Department's officials at the time asking for a short extension and that was denied. Notwithstanding the fact that there have been a significant number of submissions, having it over the summer made it difficult for many, ourselves included, to facilitate or participate in that.

Of greater concern, however, is that there should have been an enhanced role for the Oireachtas. The document itself should have been brought into committee. There should have been an opportunity for detailed scrutiny, not just in our housing and planning committee but in other committees as well. Instead we got a very brief session several days before the dissolution of the Dáil. I was very grateful to have had the benefit of at least some exchange with the Department's officials. However, we also had no opportunity to hear the view of sectoral organisations and third parties on the revised draft. Crucially, we had no opportunity to amend or even suggest amendments for consideration by the Government. When we received the revised draft in November, the Department's officials did give us a change-tracked version of it from the original NPF, which was very useful, but when I sought an updated version of that in advance of today, I was told it would not be available until after the vote. That has made it genuinely difficult to know what changes, if any, have been made between the document published in November and the one agreed by Cabinet only a week ago. As a consequence, this document is very weak. There are things that could have been done to make it better. I will go through some of those and colleagues throughout the course of the debate will refer to others.

The first issue I will raise is a concern about the calculations of population growth. The process, as the Minister of State knows, starts with a census. Two years later, the ESRI undertakes an assessment, and then, a year later, we have the review. That means a period of three years passes between the census data and the figures in the document in front of us, and a lot can change during that period. This was one of the fundamental flaws of the national planning framework in 2018. It was based on outdated census data and did not take into account changes between the 2016 census and the 2018 document. I think there is a risk of making the same mistake again. We argued during debate on the Planning and Development Bill that there should be more frequent reviews and they should be more timely on foot of the updated data becoming available from the census. Therefore, notwithstanding my concern, there needs to be a more frequent subsequent review to take account of whatever changes may happen in terms of population and migration patterns over the coming years.

This is particularly relevant when it comes to the housing needs assessment of the document. In fact, this was one of the strongest criticisms of the last NPF not just from us in the Opposition but also from the building industry, housing organisations and housing policy experts.

The 2016 census was out of date by the time Rebuilding Ireland was published. The housing targets that then fed into the national planning framework were simply too low. It took the Government far too long to accept what everybody else knew. The Minister is making the same mistake with this. I had a detailed exchange with his planning officials at the committee in November. The census was in 2022. There have been significant changes, as we know from subsequent ESRI migration and population reports. However, there has also been no adequate consideration of the issue of unmet demand. The ESRI report that has informed the planning framework is based on emerging demand, that is, future demand that will come. The only estimate we have of pent-up demand, as the Minister knows, is the Housing Commission’s. I understand some officials in the Minister’s Department do not agree with that and that is fine, but despite our having asked for the Minister and the Department to publish the methodology upon which their assessment of the deficit in its numbers in front of us today is based, that has yet to be published. We have a structural demand of 44,000 units per year, according to the ESRI, and an estimate of the unmet or pent-up demand that is about half of the Housing Commission’s. That is too low. The figure of an average of 50,000 new homes a year is too low. My reading of the report of the Housing Commission suggests it would need to be at least 60,000 per year. Every year, the Government misses that, the deficit grows and the overall targets need to be raised. This is not just a criticism of mine, as senior members of the Housing Commission are publicly on record saying the same. This is an issue that must be revised. There is a big difference between the targets Government set in the housing plan and its objective assessment of need. The latter should tell us what is required in the form of unmet demand and emerging demand. Then it is up to whoever is in government to say how that Government will meet that. The two are not the same but, for political reasons, they have been conflated, fatally undermining this plan.

I am also concerned about national planning objectives 2 and 3. I am not convinced that the 50:50 population distribution is balanced regional development. When we discussed these matters at committee, my colleagues and other Deputies, including Government Deputies, from Cork, Limerick, Sligo and Galway challenged and questioned the rationale of the 50:50 development. It is something that needs to be constantly revisited. I appreciate it represents significant growth in some of those regional cities but I am concerned it is still too Dublin- and greater Dublin area-centric, with all the problems that brings for the city, the greater Dublin area and balanced regional development more generally.

I acknowledge there has been a small change with national planning objectives 7 to 10, inclusive, on compact growth, but I am genuinely concerned "compact growth" still is not properly defined and allows outer existing settlement rather than focusing on inner urban genuine compact growth. The problem is if it is poorly defined and, as is currently the case, there are not adequate supports for public and private sector higher density inner urban development residential projects, then we are going to see continued suburban sprawl. The majority of what has been built in Dublin and the GDA over the past few years is on the other side of the M50 where I represent and in north Wicklow as well as east Kildare, Meath and south Louth. I am not arguing against housing there, but very little is actually happening in our inner urban cores in Dublin, Cork, Galway and Waterford and that is a fundamental problem.

Regarding national policy objective 45 on vacancy and dereliction, which relates to the conversation I just referenced, the crucial thing here is the NPOs, as they are the things that have legal impact, rather than the fluffy text around them. They are too weak and too ill-defined.

I bring to the Minister’s attention an ongoing concern I have with national planning objective 57 on the housing needs demand assessment. This is an important tool. If the data going into it is accurate and up to date and the methodology employed is correct, it cannot only tell us the total number of homes we need, but the tenure breakdown of those right down to county level, local electoral area and even below. However, when I met the Department a year and a half ago on this, nobody could tell me, for example, what data went into determining the social and affordable housing targets and what the actual methodology was. It seemed to almost be a mysterious black box where some stuff went in one side but very few people could explain how the numbers came out the other. I suspect if the Minister and I were to sit down with it, we would both struggle to understand where the numbers were derived from. We need to get that tool right. While the operation of the HNDA is a matter for the Minister and the Department, if it is not got right, everything that follows, including the targets for social and affordable housing, whenever they are announced, as well as targets for age-friendly accommodation and accommodation for people with disabilities, will be wrong.

I am also concerned there is no greater clarity on rural housing, Gaeltacht housing, housing on the islands or age-friendly housing from a planning point of view. We are still awaiting the guidelines. I think the Minister is the fourth Minister I have stood in front of discussing the rural guidelines. My colleague, Deputy McGuinness, will be raising both those and the Gaeltacht planning guidelines. What is in the NPF is too vague. It is too open to interpretation. There is too much inconsistency across Departments and that needs to change.

There is still no adequate attention to the spatial distribution of disadvantage. We asked for it to be mapped in the original NPF but it was not. That has all sorts of implications for ensuring investment helps us tackle disadvantage spatially. Chapter 8 on the all-Ireland dimension is vague and unclear but other colleagues will deal with that. In chapter 9, there is virtually no mention of embodied carbon in the built environment. There is lots of good stuff on energy efficiency but unless we are actually constructing a lower carbon built environment, it is going to be a problem.

This is a disappointing document. It repeats many of the mistakes of its predecessor as well as creating new mistakes. It does not have my party’s support at this stage and we will continue to make the case for a planning framework that will meet the social, economic, cultural and environmental needs of our people. This does not and it is on that basis we will be voting against it.

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