Seán Kyne (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State. I acknowledge his work and that of the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, the Ministers of State, Deputies O'Donnell and Burke and all the officials in the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage over many years on this comprehensive legislation. I acknowledge the work of the members of the Oireachtas joint committee, including Senator Cummins and Deputy Emer Higgins who worked on this legislation for a number of years.

Planning is fundamental to development and people like, expect and deserve to have confidence in the planning system. It is the least people can expect that they know and understand the process and that it is transparent and fair. The balance between development and any proposed plan depends on the area. Whether a city centre development, one on the urban fringe or in a rural area, it is important there are guidelines and confidence in the system.

One of the issues with planning is that there are no hard and fast rules. The county development plan lays out the wishes of councillors. The Bill proposes to extend the duration of county and city development plans to ten years and, therefore, councillors who were elected in recent weeks will have no say if their county development plan was done recently until after the next election. assuming they are re-elected, when a new bunch of councillors will come in to start the process again. It is an important process. It is complex, onerous and time-consuming but it is the foundation stone for development in an area. I am slightly worried that ten years is too long because changes come from the Government that have to be reflected in the county development plans. It is possible to go through amendment processes and again that can be quite onerous. The right approach to that is open to debate. When I first joined a council there were a number of local area plans for individual towns, which in a lot of cases have been subsumed into the county development plan. That makes the workload of the local authority somewhat easier and that is also important.

Timelines for the delivery of decisions are hugely important and I welcome the requirements laid out. However, whether they are too long for some of the major developments remains to be seen.

Section 278 talks about having sufficient interest in a development-----