Eoin O Broin: As bill goes before Cabinet, finally, it is time to get planning right
Sinn Féin spokesman on housing, Eoin Ó Broin. Picture: Damien Storan.
Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien is expected to bring his controversial Planning and Development Bill to Cabinet today.
The big question is whether it will address key problems in our planning system or, like most recent Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil planning legislation, make our planning system worse.
At over 800 pages, it is one of the longest pieces of legislation to ever come before the Oireachtas.
The aim of the bill is, according to Government, “to bring greater clarity, consistency, and certainty to how planning decisions are made”, while making “the planning system more coherent and user-friendly for the public and planning practitioners”.
This is the first major overhaul of the planning system since the Planning and Development Act of 2000.
After more than 20 years of substantial amendments to the principal act and significant advances in the State's environmental and public participation obligations arising from EU law and the Aarhus Convention, there is a need for consolidation and simplification.
Reform is also needed, particularly to clear up the mess caused by four successive ministers.
These include the legacy of Alan Kelly’s controversial Section 28 Ministerial Guideline legislation in 2015, Simon Coveney’s Strategic Housing Development “fast-track” planning process from 2017, the impact of Eoghan Murphy’s 2018 Mandatory Ministerial Guidelines on building heights and apartment design, and Darragh O’Brien’s rushed transitional arrangements for the Large-Scale Residential Development planning process in 2021.
These ill-conceived and often rushed changes to the planning law have significantly undermined public confidence in our planning system.
They have created increased levels of conflict between local development plans and ministerial policy. This in turn has generated increased opposition to and litigation of controversial planning applications.
Meanwhile, the chronic under-resourcing and under-staffing of our local authority planning departments and An Bord Pleanála has led to unacceptably long delays in a range of planning applications, from waste-water treatment facilities to public transport infrastructure to residential developments.
All of this was exacerbated by the crisis within An Bord Pleanála, exposed by and the throughout the course of 2022.
This is the backdrop against which Cabinet will consider the new legislation this week.
Unfortunately, like so many initiatives that Darragh O’Brien has announced since becoming minister, the Planning and Development Bill has been plagued by delay and controversy.
A planning advisory forum was established in March 2022. The minister promised publication of the bill by September of that year and enactment by the end of 2022.
Eventually an unfinished draft was published in February this year. This underwent intensive pre-legislative scrutiny during nine sessions of the Oireachtas housing committee in the spring.
During those hearings, almost every sector involved in planning and development criticised the bill and the process by which it was drafted.
Some of the strongest criticisms came from the planning profession itself. The Irish Planning Institute told the committee that the content of the bill did not reflect the discussions in the advisory forum.
The warned that the planning sections of the bill were hard to understand and would lead to increased conflicts between different levels of planning rules. This would, they argued, lead to bad planning decisions, increased litigation, and longer delays.
Specialist planning lawyers from the Law Society of Ireland and the Bar Association were also highly critical of the bill. Their view was that the proposed changes to judicial review procedures would lead to increased litigation and, in turn, longer delays to development.
Representatives from local government, environmental NGOs, and residents' associations — to name but a few — all expressed serious concerns with the draft bill.
A clear consensus had formed. Darragh O’Brien’s legislation would weaken the role of local authorities in planning policy, undermine public participation and access to justice, create greater confusion between local and central planning policy, and increase levels of litigation — all of which would lead to longer delays and poorer quality decisions.
In response, the housing committee made 156 recommendations for change to the bill in our scrutiny report to the minister in March.
Outside the committee, other influential voices also expressed concern about the draft bill.
Speaking at the Irish Planning Institute annual conference in April, An Bord Pleanála interim chairwoman Oonagh Buckley warned that the bill would lead to an increase in judicial reviews.
Glenveagh CEO Stephen Garvey, in a interview in April, warned that the bill could lead to further delays in planning decisions.
In the coming days we will see if Minister O’Brien has listened. If he has, Sinn Féin will work constructively with him to improve the planning process.
We want a planning system that makes good-quality planning decisions in a timely manner following meaningful public participation.
We need a planning system that ensures we can meet the social, economic, and environmental needs of our society.
This can be done in a manner consistent with our carbon-emission reduction targets and our obligations to halt and reverse biodiversity loss.
However, if the bill that goes to Cabinet this week does not address the many failings in the earlier draft, it will do untold damage to our planning system. We will get weaker public participation, poorer quality decisions, increased litigation, and longer delays.
Successive governments have done enough damage to our planning system in recent years. They cannot be allowed to damage it further. It is time to get planning right.
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