The new planning Bill – one of the largest pieces of legislation ever brought through the Oireachtas and which is intended to streamline the planning process – will be on the statute books by mid-October, Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien told Government colleagues on Tuesday.
In a housing update delivered to the Cabinet, Mr O’Brien also told Ministers that housing targets would be significantly exceeded, with analysts predicting up to 40,000 units delivered this year.
He told Tuesday’s first meeting of the Cabinet since July that there had been an “extraordinary” surge in commencements in the first part of this year on the back of the Government’s water connection refund and development levy waiver.
More than 49,600 units had been started in the past 12 months, amounting to almost 200 homes a day on average, he said.
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On the planning Bill, Mr O’Brien has previously said the landmark piece of legislation – which is 747 pages long – would reform and streamline the planning process, reducing delays in housing and strategic infrastructure projects. The opposition has said the Bill will in fact delay housing and is unduly cumbersome.
Its introduction initially led to a Cabinet split amid Green Party concerns over curtailing participation in the planning process by restricting judicial reviews, often the cause of long delays for housing and infrastructure projects. However, these were overcome and it progressed through the Dáil during the last term following lengthy hearings at the Oireachtas housing committee.
The Bill proposes aligning all tiers of planning, from regional to local, with objectives in the National Planning Framework, while also increasing the lifespan of local authority development plans, restructuring and renaming An Bord Pleanála, and introducing statutory timelines for decision-making.
It also introduces restrictions on parties that are entitled to seek judicial reviews of planning decisions, as well as bringing forward new Urban Development Zones, areas identified for significant development including housing. The Government introduced an amendment prohibiting demands for so-called “go away” money in return for not objecting to property developments.
The Bill has completed committee stage in the Seanad, and is expected to finish in the Upper House by October, when it will return to the Dáil for final approval of amendments introduced in the Seanad. After months of debate on the measure, the Government used the guillotine to pass the final stages in the Dáil – the parliamentary device that calls a halt to debate and seeks a vote on all parts of the Bill, whether they have been debated or not.
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