Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill 2026: Committee and Remaining Stages
Seanad Éireann — 2026-07-14
============================================================

Aubrey McCarthy (IND), University of Dublin

The purpose of my amendments was certainly well meaning. I only found out this morning that they were ruled out of order. We put a good bit of work into them. My point was that, even in my own hometown of Naas, without long-term planning, the town would be radically different than it is now. There is an area called Millennium Park. I recall when it was put on a piece of paper about how this would come about. That is 30 years ago and now it is coming to fruition. If we look at areas like Singapore, they operate on a long-term plan looking around 50 years ahead. It prepares a master plan looking ahead ten to 15 years, but there is an overall helicopter view that delivers the next phase of that longer vision. The shorter plan does not replace the long-term, but implements it. If the Minister of State remembers back to the IFSC the docklands and the regeneration of Dublin, it did not happen because of a series of disconnected planning decisions.
It happened because there was a long-term vision that allowed transport, utilities, commercial development and public investment all to be co-ordinated over a long-term plan. The Canary Wharf principle was discussed in this House before, whereby the likes of Ballymore homes were given a long-term framework. It allowed it to work over phases, but over decades. Anybody who looks at a motorway being built without the housing to justify it, or housing built without a school or a sewer to serve it, knows exactly how much long-term alignment matters. I know that with what we are legislating for now in 2026, this country will look radically different in 2056. That was the point of my amendments.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-07-14/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:52:15+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-14