The calamity of the Planning and Development Act 2024 is becoming clearer by the day. Most people are not aware that the Bill for the Act was rushed through the Houses of the Oireachtas using guillotine motions to prevent any real consideration of the measure.

Many amendments were tendered by the Government in the Seanad. They avoided debate, but were deemed to have been passed and waved through by the Dáil, as if they were amendments made after scrutiny in the Seanad.

The Act seems to create a single hierarchical basis for Irish planning and development. It is based on the fanciful notion that a national planning strategy will be promulgated by Government, approved after a cursory, fully whipped debate in the Oireachtas, and laid down to be followed by local planning authorities in accordance with ministerial planning guidelines. Adherence to the strategy and guidelines will be policed by the Office of the Planning Regulator. As ever, the Custom House reigns supreme. Planning authorities and the commission are also obliged to conform to Government policy.

Central to the folly of the Act is the role given to the newly rebranded planning commission, An Coimisiún Pleanála. Nobody has ever justified exactly why a single agency should determine disputes about every conceivable planning decision, from the petty details of home........

© The Irish Times