Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Amendment No. 1 seeks the deletion of the new subsection (6) inserted via the Dáil amendments into section 32B of the principal Act. That subsection inserted by the Minister provides that a request from a large-scale residential development applicant may include a request that the meeting be treated as a meeting for the purposes of an application under a section 32I.

Amendment No. 2 seeks the deletion of the section inserting the new sections 32H and 32L into the principal Act. These new sections 32H to 32L to be inserted into the principal Act set out details regarding the pre-application process for persons seeking to submit a flexible application under section 34 of the principal Act. Section 32H, to be inserted by the Minister, would mean that a person who intends to apply for planning permission may request a meeting with the planning authority in whose area the proposed development would be situated, under section 34 of the principal Act, for the purposes of attaining an opinion or whether it is appropriate that a flexible application for permission be made. This section sets out the documentation required to be submitted in respect of such a meeting request, including information in respect of the details of the proposed development that are likely to be unconfirmed at the time of the planning application. The planning authority should hold a meeting within four weeks on receipt of the request. The meeting would be attended by planning authority officials and so forth with relevant knowledge and expertise. Again, that is what the Minister would insert. I will come back in a moment to my amendments Nos. 1 and 2, which would delete the measures inserted by the Minister.

Section 32I, as inserted by the Minister, indicates the planning authority must insert an opinion or notification within four weeks of the meeting taking place whether it is appropriate that the proposed application be made. That is in terms of a flexible development and I will come back to that again. An opinion would set out the details that need to be confirmed by the applicant at a later stage and circumstances that allow the planning authority to allow a flexible application.

I will not go into full detail but rather than just describing these amendments as technical, it would have been useful for the Minister of State to outline what the amendments do. They are doing quite a lot and it is not purely technical. In outlining my amendments of deletion, I am stating what would be deleted. That was not mentioned by the Minister of State.