Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill 2025: Committee Stage
Seanad Éireann — 2025-07-15
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Patricia Stephenson (SD), Labour Panel

I move amendment No.1 to amendment No. 20:
After “applies.” to insert the following:
“(13) Notwithstanding paragraph (a) of subsection (12), a housing strategy of the planning authority in respect of whose functional area the development plan applies which is varied in accordance with section 69, shall only have effect from the date of such variation, and prior to such a variation, reference in this Act to a housing strategy shall be construed as including references to a housing strategy in place before a variation under section 69.”.
There is a potential issue with section 242 of the 2024 Act which the Minister of State's amendment to of section 242(12) fails to correct. The issues around the potential ambiguity or intention of an issue created by section 68(5), which is a new revised regional, spatial and economic strategy for our national planning framework, will have precedence over an existing housing strategy.
It is unclear what impact this will have on the housing strategy. What effect will it have and at what stage? I suggest that it should only have an effect after the new or revised national planning framework or the revised spatial and economic strategies are properly implemented. That would create more clarity. I am withdrawing this amendment but I just wanted to make that point on it. I urge the Minister of State to take it into consideration.
I will now speak on my amendments to amendments Nos. 29, 30 and 31 in totality. This makes sense because of the groupings. The Minister's amendment No. 29 proposes to delete the clause “prepared in accordance with Part 7” in section 603(5) of the 2024 Act. Section 603 of the 2024 Act is concerned with the development of planning frameworks for an urban development zone. Subsection (5) of that section requires that the planning framework be consistent with the housing strategy prepared in accordance with Part 7. A concern arises around this given the deletion of the reference to Part 7 and the potential confusion around the version of the housing strategy that the planning framework will be required to comply with and from what effective date. If there are changes to the housing strategy or other aspects of the Bill, will that override the housing strategy? My amendment endeavours to provide some clarity around that point. The amendment replaces section 603(5) and preserves in subparagraph (a) the requirement that the planning framework is consistent with the housing strategy. It also specifies that it is a pre-existing housing strategy, where the commencement of the planning framework commenced before the variations made under section 69. Ideally, it would also specify that there is a housing strategy in place after a variation is made to the development plan under section 69. Again, this is about making sure that the housing strategy is not affected by how this is enforced.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2025-07-15/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:03+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-07-15