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Ireland must stop prioritising short-term demands and plan for a better society

We do not have the scale of public and private investment in infrastructure to move towards greener energy and more sustainable lifestyles

Changes in population structures mean that meeting our future housing requirements will become even more complex. Photograph: Pawel Gaul/Agency Photos

Frances Ruane
Laura Burke
Thu Mar 28 2024 - 06:00

Earlier this month the Government announced that approval of a revised National Planning Framework (NPF) would be deferred “until the full suite of data required to consider matters relating to demographics and population projections has been received from the Economic Social and Research Institute (ESRI)”.

The completion date for approval of this statutory revision was due to be April 2024. The revised timetable will not see the finalised document published, subject to Government approval, until September 2024. While the delay is disappointing, especially given the scale of planning issues that should be informed by the revised NPF, it does allow more time for important consultation with all stakeholders.

Demographics are changing at an exceptionally high rate due to increased life expectancy and increased net immigration. The associated changes in population structures (with a much larger older population in coming decades) mean that meeting our future housing requirements will become even more complex. For example, older people should have options for alternative housing in their own neighbourhoods, and young people need housing at costs they can afford and in locations that do not require long commutes.

However, the revision of the framework is about much more than the population projections, and while housing is one of the country’s most serious problems, it must also deal with how spatial planning relates to other areas of policy. This includes planning key infrastructures linked to climate change, such as wind and solar farms and upgrading the national electricity grid to accommodate a growing population and increased generation of renewable energy.

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It also includes planning for an economically and socially sustainable built environment, recognising that the lack of principles to inform spatial planning in past decades has put pressure on our competitiveness and wellbeing, placing undue and avoidable burdens on businesses and families. For example, our sprawling urban areas have increased time costs for businesses and their employees, often leaving parents working at long distances from their homes and their children’s schools.

Put in the bluntest terms, the planning framework is fundamental to charting a more socially and economically sustainable way of living on this island. While there have been criticisms of Ireland’s planning system and planning processes for decades – in terms of timeliness and legal costs in particular, and publicly exposed corruption more recently – the reality is that at the heart of the problem is the absence of a broad agreement across the political and administrative system, and in society at large, on the relationship between good spatial planning and societal wellbeing.

We write as two of three authors invited to prepare a high level review in advance of this first revision of the National Planning Framework. The review identified key questions and issues that require serious consideration in the current revision. Looking at the past six years, we concluded that when it comes to planning targets and decisions, the focus must be on long-term, common-good objectives rather than on demands of individual interest groups or on short-term expediency. This represents a major change for Ireland, where a century of population decline masked the real cost of poor spatial planning and uncoordinated, laissez-faire development. These costs grew strongly from the 1970s, once Ireland experienced much higher rates of population and economic growth.

[ Government delays next housing plan to seek updated population projections ]

The review contended that, while the foundational principles in the first NPF in 2018 remain strong and highly relevant, there is an urgent need to begin to embed better spatial planning systemically in all relevant areas of policy, such as enterprise, health, education, transport and, of course, housing, and for decision-making to be much more timely. The review recommended that those conducting the revision should consider setting more ambitious targets for compact growth and addressing the inherent unsustainability of scattered, uncoordinated patterns of new houses in the countryside. It also noted the urgent need to develop principles for identifying priority locations for the large-scale strategic infrastructures that have to be built in this decade.

[ Builders confident about delivery of National Development Plan ]

As part of the review process, we met representatives of the key stakeholder bodies involved in implementing the NPF. These discussions indicated a good level of overall support for the 2018 framework, but an absence of clarity and accountability on the roles of these bodies. These roles should be made clear and strengthened (particularly in relation to the Metropolitan Area Strategic Plans), and detailed annual measurement and monitoring of the implementation process should be introduced at a national and regional level. Without these there will be no basis for evaluating whether the organisations charged with addressing the inevitable challenges and tensions that arise in applying the framework at ground level are succeeding in achieving more balanced regional growth.

We identified a need for greater co-ordination at whole of Government level across all infrastructure projects, and that this needs to go beyond the National Development Plan. In our view, Ireland does not appear to have the structures needed to deal with the scale of public and private investment in infrastructure required as we move towards greener energy, more sustainable lifestyles, and a more digitised world. An issue to be addressed is whether the scale of co-ordination needed requires greater specialist skills across the public sector to ensure the right decisions are made, and the delays and cost overruns that have characterised many previous public infrastructure decisions are avoided.

Noting the benefits of having a greater shared understanding of the societal benefits of better national spatial planning, and the full social costs of poor planning, the review recommended that those leading the NPF revision consider the value of having an open and inclusive national conversation on national spatial planning. This would help long-term objectives of better place-making to be embedded and supported in communities across Ireland. There is an opportunity as part of the longer consultation period on the revised NPF to start this conversation, which would be particularly timely with the recent announcements of new EU fiscal regulations for multiannual budgeting.

Frances Ruane is chair of the National Competitiveness and Productivity Council and Laura Burke is director general of the Environmental Protection Agency

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