Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill 2026: Committee and Remaining Stages Seanad Éireann — 2026-07-14 ============================================================ Christopher O'Sullivan (FF), Cork South-West Amendment No. 4 seeks to insert a new section into the Act of 2024 to provide for the preparation of long-term strategic master plans. It seeks to provide that each planning authority shall prepare a strategic master plan setting out a long-term vision for the physical, social, economic and environmental development of its functional area over a period of 30 years. The Senator has suggested that such plans would identify strategic development priorities, including settlement hierarchy, infrastructure corridors, climate adaptation measures and areas for regeneration; set out indicative phasing for major infrastructure and public investment; include spatial mapping of long-term development objectives; align with the national planning framework, regional, spatial and economic strategies and national planning statements; and incorporate long-term environmental transport, housing and economic projections. The proposed amendment also provides that such plans would serve as a non-statutory strategic framework guiding the preparation and review of county and city development plans, urban area plans and priority area plans, and that they should be reviewed every ten years. If it had been ruled in order, I would not have been in a position to accept the amendment. One of the key aims of the Act of 2024 was a greater alignment of all tiers of planning, following a comprehensive review of plans and plan-making in the State. The national planning framework is the Government's high-level strategic plan for shaping the future growth and development of our country. The national planning framework deals with the strategic development of the State in conjunction with the national development plan. This is further supplemented by regional, spatial and economic strategies, and ultimately by county and city development plans, which will be ten-year plans going forward. Under the Act of 2024, the national planning framework continues to spearhead and explicate the planning agenda and sits at the pinnacle of the plan-led system and structure, whereby all tiers of planning from regional to local align with strategic objectives set out in the national planning framework. Put simply, lower order plans are required to align with higher order plans. County and city development plans, including corresponding area-based plans, are aligned to the regional strategies which, in turn, are aligned to the national planning framework. National planning statements allow the planning system to remain responsive to changes, providing agility where required and allowing Government policy to inform project and programme delivery throughout the life cycle of the national planning framework. To provide consistency and to ensure revisions are made where they are required, there is a new process in the Act of 2024 to expedite reviews of county and city development plans after changes are made to the national planning framework or when new national planning statements are issued. This expedited review process will ensure that development plans remain updated and continue to be in alignment with national policy. The aim of the hierarchy of the plan-making, as set out in the Act of 2024, is to improve scope for the various tiers of the planning system to more closely relate to one another, therefore providing greater clarity and consistency for all involved, from individual citizens and residents' groups to landowners and developers and ultimately, where necessary, the courts, which have become the final arbiter of many planning decisions on large-scale development proposals in recent years. Under the Act of 2024, development plans will have a ten-year lifespan rather than the current six-year lifespan and will be more strategic in nature than under the Act of 2000. An interim review of the development plan will occur at year five in order to make account of wider changes since the plan was prepared and to allow for update if required. This will provide more up-to-date and strategic planning, providing greater certainty that there is sufficient zoned land available at all times to align with the needs of housing and economic development, providing greater certainly over a longer period for all stakeholders. The ten-year cycle with five-year reviews will mean that every elected member will be involved, at a minimum, in either the making of the county and city development plan or its review and possible amendment via the interim review. Local area plans have been replaced by specific types of area-based plans to better enable local authority objectives to be priorities, rather than simply being mandatory in nature and drawing resources where not always needed. As the system of plan-making in the State has just been revised and is being implemented for the first time, the introduction of another layer of plan-making could undermine the new hierarchy that was carefully arranged and agreed following extensive engagement with a range of stakeholders, including the Office of the Attorney General, and passed by the Houses of the Oireachtas in 2024. The regional assemblies and planning authorities are actively working on the move to plan-making under the Act of 2024. I do not think there is a need for another layer of plan-making at this time, nor is it an appropriate use of planning resources given the matters sought to be addressed should be dealt with appropriately through the NPF, the RSES, and the development plan process legislated for in the Act of 2024. Despite the fact the amendment was ruled out of order, that is probably the longest answer I have given yet. The Senator will understand the reasons we could not have accepted it if it had been ruled in order. --- 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