Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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The draft Planning and Development Bill 2022 was published in January 2023. The draft Bill is the culmination is a fifteen month review of the Planning and Development Act 2000 (as amended), led by the Office of the Attorney General.

The structures of planning have been reviewed to ensure greater alignment and consistency throughout, both with our European and environmental obligations and in relation to the various tiers of national, regional and local plan making. The draft Bill streamlines more than two decades of planning legislation into a piece of legislation which is ‘user friendly’ for the public and practitioners alike and brings greater clarity, consistency and certainty to how planning decisions are made.

Enforcement notices will be amended to provide that such notices will include an order to immediately cease work (where relevant to the particular case), unless there are extenuating circumstances where the development should continue. This could arise where an immediate cessation of the development would have particular environmental consequences.

In the draft Bill, applications for retention can then only be submitted where the owner/developer is in compliance with the order to cease work. These revised arrangements will apply in respect of all enforcement cases, both in relation to activities and development.

The Review also identified the merit in dealing with enforcement of activities on a regional or shared services basis across a number of local authorities and the draft Bill will enable regulations to provide for the management of certain enforcement cases to be undertaken on a regional or shared services basis over time.