If one example can illustrate how the State’s planning system is broken, it might be the efforts of developer Pat Crean and his Marlet group to build a large number of homes next to St Anne’s Park in Raheny, or Clontarf East, depending on how upwardly mobile you’re feeling.
Marlet bought the site adjacent to St Anne’s Park in 2015 with a view to providing a significant number of homes.
Since then, it has been subject to five decisions by An Coimisiún Pleanala and its predecessor appeals board, at least 11 sets of legal proceedings and countless objections.
Last week, the latest plan – for 580 apartments in seven blocks rising to a maximum of seven storeys – was rejected by the commission over fears for the wellbeing of migratory light-bellied brent geese.
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A Dublin City Council ruling on the scheme when it was presented back in 2022 – at which time it received 230 objections – said Marlet “has not demonstrated that the evidence provided supports the assertion that no impact arises to the Dublin Bay populations of protected Brent geese” as it ruled in favour of the geese over housing need.
Apparently, any impact on the geese, however modest and with a 240-acre park next door, was not to be entertained. Any effect on efforts to provide housing for people in the area, however, is acceptable.
In the middle of a housing crisis, it is becoming increasingly clear that the actual provision of homes is bottom of the heap in terms of priority under the planning system as structured.
Approval can come only after every other element of the process is satisfied in full – local development plans that were outdated from the time they were drawn up, the views of those fortunate enough to already have homes, environmental factors, precise deadlines for every report and piece of supporting documentation.
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Any single other element falls short of perfection and it is the homes that pay the price.
Nobody is arguing that planners need to ride roughshod over environmental concerns, that we should ignore EU rules or even the generally one-eyed objections of existing local residents. But society requires trade-offs in pursuit of the common good if it is to function.
Even politicians now understand that housing is the single most pressing social and political issue of our time. Unless other elements of the planning process are also required to compromise, there is no chance of addressing the housing crisis and every chance of growing social exclusion with the risks that brings.
