The Gazette 1981

GAZETTE

JULY-AUGUST 1981

should be included. If not included the Regulations could be a charter for the unnecessary legal proceedings, unnecessary waste of time of senior professional and administrative staff in the Public Authorities and a charter for the whole industry to cater for the protestors and the third party objectors. She suggested that the Regulations were far t oo complex and would present major difficulties to the controllers and the controlled. The Construction Industry Federation believe that there should be a simple set of Regulations to deal with domestic buildings, and that more complex buildings should be dealt with by broadly expressed functional re- gulations and the use of supporting approved contract documents. The C IF had always felt that the philosophy of self regulation as a means of regulating an industry is the right way and the best wa y. Legislation is not always the panacea it may seem and is not always a solution to the problem. C I F felt that they had achieved much by self regulation — the National Hou se Building Guarantee Scheme, and the Standard Fo rm of Contract among others. They have no doubt that more had been achieved in three years than could have been achieved by a State Ag e n c y. Planning Permission and the Economic Environment In his paper on Planning Permission and the Economic Environment Mr. Sean McKo n e, the Hon. Secretary of the Construction Industry Federation drew attention to the fact that a study in 1 9 76 of the decisions reached on planning applications made to Dublin County Council during the previous year showed that in 7 5%- 8 0% of the cases permissions were granted. However about half the applications were for extensions to dwellings and for changes of use and for the erection of advertising signs and other relatively small projects. In a more detailed analysis of the Dublin County decisions the surprising result emerged that one-third of all group residential pro- jects — housing estates and flats — were refused permission and nearly half the applications for factories, offices, shops, pubs, garages and warehouses were re- fused permission. The annual reports of An Bord Pleanala indicated that nearly half the appeals lodged with them came from the Eastern Planning region (Dublin, Kildare, Meath and Wicklow). If the Dublin County Council figures are representative of the Eastern planning region and perhaps the whole country it would be found that nearly half the important work for the Construction Industry, work generating large employ- ment and the use of vast quantities of Irish made materials was either refused permission at local level or was the subject of a third party appeal. He believed that the situation if anything had got worse since 1 9 75 and that it was an intolerable burden on the Construction In- dustry. A survey of Architects in 1 9 76 indicated that costs were inflated by about 5% as a result of the plan- ning control procedures. H e suggested that there were a number of changes that could be made immediately to the planning process without the necessity of having amending legislation. The most dramatic change would be if An Bord Pleanala worked to a time limit and Section 2 0 (1) of the 1 9 76 Act gave the Minister for the Environment power to make a regulation requiring them so to do. He believed that recent Court decisions would necessitate changes in the

planning regulations and this would be an ideal opportunity to make this most important change. He be- lieved that the length of time that the Board should take should be a maximum of six months from the date of the decision of the Planning Authority though this time could be extended by agreement with the applicant or by permission of the Minister. Dealing with the question of planning appeals generally he said that there was no doubt that the right of third parties to object is overbalanced in their favour. It is quite clear that the total elimination of third parties rights to object would not be acceptable to the Oireachtas — re- flecting the public opinion. Third party rights would be adequately protected if such objections were allowed only at one stage of the planning process. What would suffice would be to elevate the status of the outline planning permission by the submission of essential data such as use, height, point of access, distances from crucial boundaries. Third parties would have the right to object at this stage. On ce outline permission had been granted by the Planning Authority or granted on appeal by An Bord Pleanala the more detailed planning could only be the subject of an appeal by one of the parties to the application. Once the planning use of the site had been approved then the detailed submission or detailed changes could not be the subject of a merry-go-round at an immense cost to the developer and immense loss of jobs to the Construction Industry. Price Control System on Houses In a paper on the present Price Control System on Houses, Michael Greene a Director of the Construction Industry Federation in a historical review of the C RV system stated that very soon after its introduction it became evident that there were certain problems with the CRV system which the Industry found difficult if not impossible in some cases to c o pe with. There was secrecy on the part of the Department in its discussions with applicants for certificates and there were the delays in dealing with applicants. There was no mechanism for an appeal against refusal to issue a certificate. If a builder was refused a certificate no reasons were given for that re- fusal. The system did not take account of s ome of the fundamentals of a market e c o n omy such as taking into consideration a company's previous experience. How then had industry responded to the situation? To a degree the response was to build non-grant aided houses. It is clear from statistics that there was from the mid- 1 9 7 0s a clear shift in the structure of the private housing market away from smaller houses towards bigger houses, and one of the contributing factors was the unwillingness of the industry to continue to operate a CRV system which they felt was inequitable. In looking to the future he commented that the CRV system was introduced into a different world from that which exists today. The builder who is building for the first time buyer can no longer operate on the principle of "I will charge whatever I can get" but rather must operate on the principle of "What can I build which will enable me to sell to the first time buyer given the limitations on his ability to repay his loan and raise a deposit?" It was necessary to encourage builders into the first-time buyer market. The CRV system acts in the reverse. The private sector was in his view the most

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