Sir, – That those in the State’s budgetary watchdog have chosen to conceptualise public participation in environmental decision making as a “planning and objection system” is concerning (“Up to 80,000 extra workers needed to address housing crisis, fiscal council says”, News, October 30th).
In a recent paper, University of Manchester planning and politics researcher Gareth Fearn describes how language not unlike this around planning reform in England has sought to shift accountability from those with structural power to those with much more marginal power.
Blaming increased timelines for projects just on deliberation (and not expanding on the impacts of the shortage of hundreds of professional planners, for example) is overly simplistic.
It seems that those responsible for holding Government to account when it comes to the public finances think there should be limits to scrutiny elsewhere. – Yours, etc,
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Dr SEÁN A O’LEARY,
Crookstown,
Co Cork.