The Irish Planning Institute has called on the government to stop “tinkering” with planning regulations and give the system time to show results over a two-to-three-year period.

Ahead of the Irish Planning Institute’s annual conference in Athlone this week, the representative body for professional planners across the island of Ireland said the political system needed to recognise that housing and infrastructure delivery “takes time”.

Gavin Lawlor, President of the Irish Planning Institute, cautioned there are no “quick fixes” or “game changers” to speed up the planning system in Ireland.

“The reality is that the real game changers don’t show results for two or three years. Housing delivery, infrastructure provision, climate action and place making are often framed as issues that can be solved through single policy changes or procedural shortcuts. As planners, we know this is rarely the case,” Lawlor said.

“You have to make the change, have faith in it, and stop constantly tinkering and pulling it apart again. Too often, pressure to accelerate delivery produces the opposite effect,” he added.

With up to 400 professional planners set to attend the Irish Planning Institute’s two-day annual conference in Athlone this week, Lawlor said part of the challenges facing the planning system relate to political culture.

“In Irish politics today, mistakes are treated as fatal rather than instructive. Debate becomes about point scoring instead of problem solving, and evidence is quickly drowned out by blame. Planning becomes the fall guy, absorbing blame for things that sit well outside it such as under-resourcing, political timidity, policy churn, and a reluctance to confront how markets actually behave,” Lawlor said.

Bypassing planning

The Irish Planning Institute president also warned that recent actions taken to circumvent the planning process, including elements of the new critical infrastructure bill and exempted developments, are not acts of “reform”, but of “regression”.

In response to this, the Irish Planning Institute has called on the government to publish the draft guidelines for exempted development regulations and to open a consultation process with professional planners and the public. Lawlor said the time has passed for press releases and announcements, and that the government must now work to finalise these measures and allow the planning system to get to work.

“When it comes to reform, much of the recent discussion has been around exempted development. Much of what we hear proposed makes sense, however some of the kites being flown risk ignoring legitimate concerns – both from planners and communities. These include concerns around amenity, access, water and wastewater provision and possibly opening up the floodgates to enforcement complaints and investigations,” Lawlor said.

“Some of the commentary about accelerating infrastructure and speeding up planning by circumventing the planning system is an oxymoron. To bypass planning altogether is not reform; it is regression. Planning serves communities, not individuals. Infrastructure, housing and growth inevitably benefit the many more than the few, and Ireland has become increasingly uncomfortable with that trade‑off,” he added.

System Bottlenecks

Finally, Lawlor added that there are positives coming to light in the planning system, particularly in relation to the backlog at An Coimisiún Pleanála. Now that it is being properly resourced by government, Lawlor said significant progress has been made in clearing the large backlog of cases before the commission, although he noted there are dozens of projects that are still more than two years before the board without a decision.

While the decision timelines in An Coimisiún Pleanála have accelerated, Lawlor warned that this progress risks masking growing bottlenecks elsewhere in the system.

“Regardless of the potential benefits of modern methods of construction, you are not going to deliver housing targets if you don’t have concrete. Long delayed decisions on quarries, nursing homes, renewable energy projects and water infrastructure are now creating secondary crises that will ultimately slow housing delivery rather than accelerate it,” he said.