Planning Process Reform

Last Stop

Rather unexpectedly Brendan Howlin made an interesting (and correct) statement during the debate last night
“We don’t have a planning process in Ireland... we have a permission process”

He’s dead right. Developers decide what they want to build and where.

In addition to this, due to NIMBYISM and objections, many larger developments are bypassing the traditional planning process and going straight to An Bord Pleanala under Strategic Infrastructure.

Is it now time to fix the system?

We are still requesting 6 paper copies of documents which are then poorly scanned into the website.
Each council website has an entirely different format and way of searching for permissions
The appeals process is a joke with the bar set far too low for not only lodging an appeal but also taking cases to the courts for judicial review.

Idbatterim

the "traditional method" has played a large part in this crisis!

magicbastarder

funny thing is that a lot of people who hate the greens seem to forget that the last decent attempt at reform happened under them.
or maybe that's why people don't like them.

Thelonious Monk

I wish we could implement some kind of dictatorship to get a few infrastructure projects going. Knock down whatever needs to go for a metro, bus lanes etc. You lose a bit of your garden, here's 20 grand, tough sh*t. Your flats are gone for a station, tough sh*t, here's a new flat nearby. We need some high rises in the docklands, oh it blocks the sun to your corpo gaf you get for feck all anyway, tough sh*t count your blessings. It's all for the greater good.
I often wonder how they do these things in other countries.

Idbatterim

in 2020 ! with problems with sustainablity, lives a misery with commuting on the third world transport system. Massive rents, undersupply of housing. They are still absolutely wasting the land in the docklands, no regards for sustainability. Many 8-9 floor blocks going up there!

In a country that doesnt do anything at speed and doesnt do infrastructure, maybe , just maybe it would make sense to build where people want to actually live and where they are commuting too! :rolleyes:

roddney

Most of the problems are definitely around mass inefficiencies.

A don't agree with current fast track or appeals process though, which takes it out of hands of local council and onto a central agency. This is leading to court submissions due to lack of local involvement and feeling of exclusion.

Digitise everything (plan submissions, objections, appeals) under a central website, with local planning departments making decisions within much shorter SLA. Remove need for newspaper (publish on central site), 4 weeks for comments, standard decisions 2 weeks later. 2 weeks to appeal, 2 weeks for further comment, 2 weeks for final decision.

Rank every submission so that normal ones are quick with extra SLA given for complex multi-residenece schemes, infrastructure projects, complex environmental impacts etc.

L1011

Remove An Taisces automatic consultation role would be a first step - it has never worked as expected and is instead used for baseless NIMBYism