Francis Noel Duffy (Dublin South West, Green Party)
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102. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the status of the review by the County and City Management Association of local authority capacity and resources before the Planning and Development (Amendment) (LSRD) Bill 2021 is enacted to ensure local authorities are adequately resourced and appropriately staffed; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [54959/21]

Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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I am anxious to ensure that planning authorities are appropriately resourced to meet the demands of Housing for All, the National Development Plan and the Planning and Development (Amendment) (LSRD) Bill 2021. I recognise that there are changing work demands being placed on authorities from the strong terrestrial and marine planning legislation, and the monitoring required from development plans.  For that reason, Housing for All, refers to the need in Action 24.1 to ensure that there is sufficient resourcing to meet the scale of ambition in the plan.  In particular, reference is made to the need for planning resources to deliver an average of 33,000 units per annum, as well as the skills and resources necessary to deliver on urban regeneration and town centre first, which relate to both Planning and Economic Departments of local authorities.

This requirement was highlighted at a recent meeting with Chief Executives of local authorities, and I am committed to ensuring that the resourcing is made available through the workforce planning process.   The issue goes beyond funding of posts, but also needs to deal with building new skills and increasing digitalisation of the planning service.  We have received a submissions on this wider skills and resourcing issue of planning authorities from the Irish Planning Institute, and we will be giving this matter consideration in conjunction with work to be carried out by the County and City Management Association.  I do not as yet have a timeframe for the conclusion of this work.