The Government and Opposition remain locked in a dispute over whether the Project Ireland 2040 development plan should have been put to a vote in the Dáil and Seanad.
At a meeting of the Oireachtas Housing and Local Government Committee on Thursday it was disclosed that legal advice on the status of the 20-year planning framework had been received.
It emerged during the meeting that Maria Bailey, a Fine Gael TD and chair of the committee, and her Opposition colleagues had interpreted the legal advice differently.
While Ms Bailey asserted that no vote was required, Fianna Fáil’s Pat Casey and Sinn Féin’s Eoin Ó Broin argued one should have been held on the plan.
Planning advisers
The committee heard from senior departmental planning advisers about how the plan is to be implemented in the months and years ahead.
Senior adviser Niall Cussen told the committee that regional assemblies would complete their plans soon. His colleague Alma Walsh said county development plans would be put on hold until those regional plans were published.
“The wider benefit is that it ensures that local authorities are not without the guidances of national and regional plans,” she said.
Mr Cussen emphasised during the hearing that the National Planning Framework could be adapted and changed during its lifetime.
Responding to Mr Casey, who said there seemed no legal mechanism for amending the framework, Mr Cussen said: “It would be very wrong of us in a tablet of stone to set out detailed population targets. That would be a very unwieldy and rigid system.”
Mr Ó Broin said he was concerned that in some cases public transport would be provided only after housing had been completed in large new developments, leaving residents without adequate transport links to workplaces, shops and schools.
Mr Ó Broin also argued the framework should have included maps showing areas of economic disadvantage. However, the planning adviser for the NPF, Paul Hogan, told the committee such maps were not that informative. He said 70 per cent of Irish areas were mixed, that 15 per cent were affluent and a further 15 per cent were disadvantaged.
Geographically scattered
“The 15 per cent disadvantaged group is geographically scattered, and best dealt with at a local and at at town plan level,” he said.
Ms Bailey said the plan was the most ambitious she had seen during her career in politics and that it would put an end to the bad planning of the past which had diminished the quality of life of many people, forcing them into long-distance commutes, with their children in childcare for longer hours.
Her colleague Fergus O’Dowd welcomed the inclusion of Drogheda as a regional hub.
Responding to Senator Victor Boyhan, Mr Cussen agreed that in the past not enough time and effort had been spent in training and increasing the knowledge of councillors in planning matters.
He said this issue would be addressed during the process to establish the new Office for Planning Regulation.
Fianna Fáil’s Barry Cowen said rural Ireland and the midlands had been ignored in the plan.
“If you are serious about rural communities thriving in future, you have to allow people live in the countryside.
“There is a definite trend in this strategy to move people to urban areas. I appreciate that cities need to grow (but not at the expense of rural communities),” he said.
