The Government has been accused of ramming through 48 pages of amendments to the Planning and Development Amendment Bill in an approach described by Social Democrats co-leader Catherine Murphy as “a new low”.
Ms Murphy said it was “absolutely outrageous” that the Bill had tripled in size after the Government “sat on it for an entire year”, and was now trying to rush the legislation through the Dáil ahead of summer recess.
“I believe this is a new low when it comes to rushed, reckless, haphazard and confused legislation from your Government,” Ms Murphy said during Leaders’ Questions in the Dáil on Wednesday.
The Bill cover substitute consent, a form of retention planning for large infrastructure. However, the amendments put forward are outside the subject matter of the Bill and instead focus on access to the courts, valuations and short-term letting.
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Ms Murphy noted that a particular provision, allowing An Bord Pleanála to retrospectively change decisions which were wrong in fact or in law after a court challenge to the decision had been lodged, had been withdrawn.
“Other changes to the manner in which the courts deal with planning challenges remain in the Bill along with a host of other problematic amendments,” she said. “The fact that you would try to shoehorn these kinds of planning amendments into a Bill that’s supposed to deal with non-consequential issues when there are three separate investigations under way into An Bord Pleanála really beggars belief.”
In response Taoiseach Micheál Martin said that Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien had signalled to the Seanad last April that he intended to amend the Bill and that an Oireachtas committee was briefed on the changes proposed earlier this week. Mr Martin said there was an obligation on the Government to streamline the State’s planning system and to “make it more efficient”.
He said TDs should “not escape from the reality” that it was taking “too long” to get projects through the planning system, and that it takes between eight to 10 years to deliver off-shore wind energy developments. “We need to collectively work our way through this because projects are taking too long.”
The Environmental Pillar on Wednesday called on the Government to withdraw “deeply problematic amendments” to the Bill, which is likely to be guillotined in the Oireachtas on Thursday in advance of the summer recess.
“These amendments, if passed, will serve to perpetuate the problem of bad planning decisions that have plagued this country, particularly in recent years, and the judicial reviews associated with them,” the coalition of 32 environmental organisations warned.
It said the changes would inevitably cause delays in judicial reviews of planning decisions and overburden the courts system. “On top of our legal concerns about these changes the Government amendments will have a seriously dysfunctional and negative effect on the whole planning system,” said Attracta Uí Bhroin, environmental law officer with the Irish Environmental Network.
The Irish Planning Institute has also raised concerns, and its president Mary MacMahon said
outstanding issues needed to be addressed urgently, such as concerns about how existing strategic housing development permissions can be amended without entering the new large-scale residential development process.
“In addition to this there are concerns about the two-stage design process proposed and the level of detail which can be agreed post-consent while meeting environmental assessment requirements, which must be revisited in the overall planning reform package,” she said.
It was necessary to encourage, rather than reduce, public engagement and community involvement in all stages of the planning process, and amendments to already complex planning law should always be evidence-based, Ms MacMahon said.
The institute said the most effective means of reducing costs and delays often associated with judicial reviews on planning matters was to establish a well-resourced court specialising in planning matters, “ideally a planning and environmental court, or a division of the High Court”.
