Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Senator Landy's concern seems to be based on the fact that he thinks I am having a go at local authorities for their delay in making decisions. As it happens, that is not what this is about. There is as big an onus on developers here as there is on the system to make decisions. If developers do not have their work done before they go to a pre-planning stage, they will not get very far. We can no longer tolerate the practice of a poor developer going in with a poor proposal on zoned land, where, effectively, local authority architects and engineers end up having to redesign the project over months of consultation, because we need to have a much better, much higher-quality application ready for consideration in the first place. I have stated bluntly to developers, whether at CIF conferences or wherever, that the onus is now on them. The State is responding with a streamlined decision-making process which maintains the integrity of decisions but also gives certainty around timelines for those decisions. However, their role in this is to significantly improve the quality of applications from day one. Otherwise they will get thrown out and we make no apologies for that. Half-assed planning applications for more than 100 housing units or more than 200 student accommodation units do not deserve to get serious consideration anyway, as far as I am concerned.This is not a criticism of local authorities per se. It is about changing the system and everybody's input into it, from developers to putting an onus on local authorities to have a statutory period of pre-planning consultation which will essentially result in a local authority making a recommendation as to whether an application should be granted before it goes to An Bord Pleanála. This would have a major influence over the final decision, I suspect. Local authorities have real power here. Planners will make recommendations and observations, and councillors will have the opportunity to make observations. Let us not forget that they are not planners. However, they may comment on other related issues that deserve planning consideration.