Ministers at sea over complex Planning Bill

THERE are two things you should never watch being made, sausages and laws. The Government's controversial Planning and Development Bill is a case in point. In 2022, Housing Minister Darragh O'Brien announced a root-and-branch reform of the State's planning legislation. He promised that a consolidated planning code would bring clarity, consistency and certainty.

The result, he said, would be to remove the blockages in our planning system and enable the delivery of much-needed housing, renewable energy and infrastructure.

A high-level legal team, headed by the then-attorney general

Paul Gallagher, was convened in early 2022. A wider consultative planning forum, involving professional bodies, public, private and semi-State developers and environmental organisations, met periodically.

Mr O'Brien said the Bill would be published in September 2022 and hoped it would become law by the end of that year.

When 2022 came and went it was clear there was trouble ahead. A partially completed Bill running to over 600 pages.

The Oireachtas Housing Committee conducted an extensive series of prelegislative scrutiny hearings in February.

During 10 meetings held over five weeks, the committee heard from planners, architects, lawyers, builders, energy companies, the local

Government sector, environmental groups and community associations.

Despite the divergent and often conflicting interests there was near unanimity on two points. The process through which the Bill was drafted was deeply flawed. As a result, the legislation did not achieve its objective of clarity, consistency, or certainty.

There were two particularly troubling sessions. The first was with the Irish Planning Institute, representing professional planners. The second was with the Bar Association and Law Societies' planning and environment specialists.

Their collective view was that the Bill, as drafted, would result in increased confusion and conflict within our planning system. This would lead to greater levels of litigation. The result being longer delays in the delivery of much-needed housing, renewable energy and critical infrastructure.

In response to the hearings, the Oireachtas Housing Committee's report to Government in March made an unprecedented 156 proposed changes to the Bill.

The big question was whether the Government would listen, not just to the cross-party committee report, but to the planners, lawyers and development community, who work in the planning system every single day.

Despite the committee conducting its pre-legislative scrutiny in a very timely manner, the publication of the final Bill was repeatedly delayed.

Initially, we were told that it would be published before the summer recess, then in September.

While Mr O'Brien secured

Cabinet approval for the Bill in the first week of October, it took a further month before the then-700-page legislation was available. And still, the Bill, wasn't finished.

In a series of private briefings with the Oireachtas Housing Committee, officials from the Department of Housing informed members that significant additions would come by way of Government amendments to their own Bill.

And so, on November 30 2023, the third-longest piece of legislation in the history of the State started its passage through the Oireachtas.

The second stage debate received little media attention, despite the significance of the proposed legislation.

Government and opposition set out their stall on the generalities of the legislation. The opposition were united in their view that without substantial amendment the Bill would make our planning system worse.

The scale of the necessary change was clear when the Oireachtas Bills office published over 1,100 amendments.

The select committee, dealing with the Bill, started working through the amendments on Tuesday, February 13. Despite complaints from opposition members of the committee, the Government side insisted on a gruelling schedule of eight meetings a week running up to 20 hours over three days.

To date, the meetings have been less than adequate. The Department of Housing officials look exhausted. The various ministers taking the Bill are clearly out of their depth. Most Government members of the committee are either absent or silent. And the compressed meeting schedule makes careful consideration of the Bill more difficult.

Two weeks in and 15 meetings down, we have discussed 400 amendments, voted on 100, discussed 11 of the Bill's 541 sections and voted on 10 of these.

There is little indication from Government that they are minded to accept any significant amendments from opposition members of committee.

Indeed, all too often it appears that ministers don't actually understand the provisions of the Bill.

Last Wednesday, the president of the Irish Planning Institute Gavin Lawlor made an unprecedented intervention in an opinion piece in the Irish Independent. Clearly speaking to the TDs in the select committee, he said that the Bill as drafted ‘will not speed up the delivery of housing, energy projects or infrastructure.'

‘Rather than streamlining planning,' he said, the legislation risks, ‘further increasing the complexity of the system'.

Mr Lawlor urged Government to facilitate a ‘section-by-section consultation and review with practitioners so the implications in practice of the new measures can be considered and the Bill amended accordingly'.

Failure to do so, he warned, would make the legislation ‘unworkable'.

For the professional body that represents planners, the people who make planning applications and decide on them, to describe the Bill as ‘unworkable' is criticism that the Government ignores at their peril.

So far, it looks like the Government is not listening. What is clear is that bad planning legislation is like bad food poisoning. It either causes diarrhoea or constipation.

Bad planning legislation and decisions during the Celtic Tiger era literally led to s*** being built all over the place.

Bad planning legislation and decisions in recent years have clogged the entire system up in appeals, judicial reviews and delays.

The Planning and Development Bill is a once-in-a generation opportunity to get planning right. To put in place a planning system that makes good quality decisions, in a timely manner, based on meaningful public participation, allowing public, semi-State and private sector developers to meet the social, economic and environmental needs of our society.

If this opportunity is wasted, it will take decades to clean up the mess, during which time muchneeded housing, renewable energy and infrastructure will either not be delivered or delivered too slowly.

Bad legislation is like food poisoning