Seeking Validation

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Tom Phillips Associates, which I set up in
2002 with two colleagues, johnand Gavin, and we've run the
business since then.
I came from a company calledFrank Benson and Partners, so
I'd been a partner with FrankBenson, who was an excellent
planner and unfortunately diedquite young in 2001.
And in terms of a primarydegree, I did an unusual route

(01:04):
to being a planning consultantin that I studied art history
and English.
And the reason I studied arthistory and English was because
I'd actually set off to be alawyer on foot of my father's
pleading.
My father was a brilliant manand he really taught because I
used to argue quite a bit withhim as a teenager.
He said to me Tom, you shouldreally be a barrister.
My father was in in the grainbusiness, so he wasn't a

(01:24):
barrister himself, but he alwaysliked the law and he just tried
to encourage me to be a planneror to be a lawyer.
And unfortunately, through notstudying hard enough in fifth
year and hopefully my two twintwin 17 year olds won't be
listening to this but I didn'tmanage to get into law.
So I did an art history degree,an English degree, with the
view of doing the bar afterwards, but I actually grew to love

(01:48):
architecture through doing arthistory and I had a brilliant
professor, alistair Rowan, whoencouraged me then to do town
planning.
So I did town planning afterdoing the primary degree.
I did two years in UCD and thenI went to the UK and worked for
an architecture company calledTerry Farrell, who'd be well
known in the modern architecture, worked with him for four years
, came back and Frank Bensontook me on for two weeks and we

(02:11):
became business partners andworked with him for seven years
until he died.
And then I set up my ownpractice and we've grown from
seven people We've now got 32people.
We've got 16 in Dublin and 16in Cork.
Wow, and that's the practice.
And we would tend to be seen asbeing very pro-development and
we're deliberately so, becauseI'm passionate about development

(02:31):
, I love it and I always tellpeople it's a planning and
development act.
It's not a planning act or adevelopment act, it's a planning
and development act and thewhole purpose of the planning
act is to facilitate development.
It was interesting with yourtalk with brendan a few weeks
ago, brendan slattery whereyou're talking about the, the
fun fairs the only thing thatthe planning act says in the
preamble that it set out tocontrol its fun fairs,

(02:52):
everything else that we providedfor houses, roads, schools, etc
.
It's a provision act, but it'sit's been treated as if it's not
a provision act.
And the comment about thetreacle came from a Scottish
architect in 2004 that Iremember reading the article in
the Irish Times where he leftIreland and he said he was so
frustrated being an architect inIreland, having trained in

(03:12):
Scotland, because he said everyday was like wading through
treacle.
I just thought it was a reallygood analogy and I've used it
ever since.
And that was years ago, yes,2004, and now 2025.
So it's 21 years ago, ageneration ago.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
Yeah, and what's?
We don't have video.
But you brought a veryinteresting book in here today
to show me, which I think isinteresting, because if 20 years
ago they thought runningthrough Treacle the last episode
, we were talking to BrendanSlattery about the length of the
planning act and I was makingthe point that they're kind of
proud as as about how long it is, which is sort of a weird

(03:48):
perverse thing.
But Tom has brought in a bookhere called a guide to the
planning act that was written byKevin I Nolan, who is the
grandfather of Kevin Nolan ofHibernia.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
And father of Bill and father of Bill and
grandfather of Rod and all theother Nolans, and and father of
Bill and father of Bill andgrandfather of.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
Rod and all the other Nolans.
And if you could see this bookin front of me, it's about three
quarters of an inch thick andit has both the 1963.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
1963 and the 1976 Act and an explanation of both of
them.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
So they're both published in full and an
explanation.
And this book is.
It's not an inch thick, it's.

Speaker 2 (04:24):
A5.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
It's also an A5.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
And it book is, it's not an inch thick, it's A5.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
Yeah, it's also an A5 .
And it's like the decenttypeface in it too.
So that's where we started.
We don't have a copy of the newplanning act here because,
despite being a constructioncompany, we don't have machinery
capable of lifting it.
It's so goddamn big.
So if that Scottish architect,I wonder what he would think.

Speaker 2 (04:49):
He wouldn't be too thrilled.
I just did a bit of analysis onthis.
Actually just the 1963 Act.
So the 63 Act came out in.
It came out in 1963, obviouslyin August, but actually it was.
It commenced on the 1st ofOctober 1964.
So on the 1st of October 1964.
So on the 1st of October 2024,it was 60 years old.
And in 1963, it had 92 sectionsIn the amendment.

(05:11):
In 2000, it had 277 sectionsand in the 2024 version it has
637.
Going from 92 to 637 sections.
And that is the Planning Act.
And on foot of the Planning Actwe'll also have to have the new
planning regulations, which arebound to be even more than 900
pages long, and what's reallyhappened in that time, which I

(05:32):
think is interesting, right?

Speaker 1 (05:34):
So if you leave out the 1960s and 70s, which
economically were sort of verybad times here and not that the
80s were particularly good, butthings generally started to
improve a little bit after thatwe consistently built more and
more houses every year up until2006, which is the peak of the

(05:55):
some would say the madness.
But as it happens now all thosehouses are occupied and then we
had the big crash.
And then since then we'vestruggled to get back to housing
output numbers of the early 90s.
We've struggled to get back tohousing output numbers of the
early 90s.
We've struggled to get back tothat when the population was
about 50% lower than it is today.
So the increase in complexityin the Planning Act seemed to

(06:16):
correlate pretty closely withfalling output, not just of
housing right, of all forms ofyeah, it's more, it's more
complex, yeah it's more.
It's more complex, but it alsoseems to be to be coming from a
place of stopping rather thanfrom enabling right, like, uh,
correct, the complexity is notsaying uh, here's all the things
we need to consider to get thisdone.

(06:37):
It's here's all the ways thatwe can stop things if it's not
exactly right, like there'sanother thing that you brought
in very kindly, uh, and, and yousent me the digital version of
it, which felt smaller because Inow have it in hard copy and
it's an entire.
It's basically a book you'vewritten.
Um, it's a presentation, butit's essentially a book about,

(06:58):
about invalidation, um, sosomething that we probably
actually haven't discussed,cause we never showed up talking
about planning on this podcast,but one of the things we
probably haven't discussed isvalidation.
You might just give us a quickOkay.

Speaker 2 (07:11):
So there are 31 planning authorities in Ireland.
There used to be 86 until about2014, when the government
changed, and I actually made thepoint one time that if China
had the same number of planningauthorities as Ireland perorata,
then it would have 26,000planning authorities.
So luckily we had 86 and theminister, phil Hogan, changed it
to 31.

Speaker 1 (07:32):
And they were like city planning and then the
counties and cities.

Speaker 2 (07:36):
I made a joke one time at a conference because
people were complaining aboutthe lack of democracy, about
getting rid of some of theplanning authorities, and I said
, in fairness I felt very guiltyabout because I promoted, that
we needed fewer than 86.
And I said the Templemore TownCouncil had its own planning
department and they actually hadincreased.
They'd done 50% more in 2012than they'd done in 2011.

(07:58):
Because in 2011, I think theyhad processed four planning
applications and in 2012 theyprocessed six, so their work
data doubled.
I'm not going to put 50%, soit's just kind of a jokey thing.

Speaker 1 (08:10):
I didn't know this, templemore.

Speaker 2 (08:13):
I have been there.
This is not when the guards are, yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:16):
There's not really anything else there apart from
the guard at the college.
That had its own planningdepartment.

Speaker 2 (08:21):
It had its own planning department, yeah, and
own planning department.
I had my own planningdepartment, yeah, and it was
assessing applications.
So now we've got 31.
And I did this report not forany client but for myself and
because I do think I should havementioned actually as well.
I've been lecturing in UCDsince 1993.
So I came back from the UK in1993 and was given a job by my
former lecturers to write areport, and then they asked me

(08:43):
would I become a lecturer?
So now I've been lecturingthere since 1993 and was made
adjunct associate professor ofplanning a few years ago, which
was amusing Because it startsoff doing art history and my
lecturer on the first day hadsaid, oh, you'll have difficulty
, because no one had done itfrom art history before, they'd
done it from law and fromwhatever.
But I just had done.

(09:04):
I'd learned how to use a scaleruler and how to read drawings.
I know every single part of abuilding through doing art
history because we specialize inarchitectural history.
Okay, and alistair owen who'swho's still, thank god, is still
alive was a brilliant lecturerand he taught us how to use
scale rulers, how to look atbuildings, how to assess them,
etc.
And that's how I came toplanning as a student,

(09:24):
understanding what a buildingdid or what it looked like, and
in my two years in ucd I neveractually used a scale ruler as a
planner.
So I now, when I teach now I doeight years, eight days a year,
eight to ten.
My second or third lecture ishow to read drawings.
I teach planning students howto read drawings, how to hold a
scale ruler, how to work it out,how interpret scale.

Speaker 1 (09:44):
It's not well known that a lot of people that work
in planning can't read drawings?

Speaker 2 (09:49):
Correct, yeah, and it was a problem and it was an
acknowledged problem a few yearsago when they brought in a
number of temporary boardmembers into the Planning
Appeals Board.
Yeah, that they couldn't, thatthey didn't come from a
background where they weretrained how to use yeah, and it
trained how to use.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
Yeah, it's not their fault, right?
I'm not going to go with them.
Like it's not an easy thing toread a 2d drawing, like it's
something that you have to beshown how to do absolutely and
it's a huge important thatplanners can do that.
So um so yeah, the validation,invalidation.

Speaker 2 (10:14):
So invalidation came around.
I think sometimes I feltbecause of an inability of
either us acting on behalf ofdeveloper to to to put forward
clear drawings to a localauthority or a local authority's
ability to read the drawings orsomething in between.
And we had 31 planningauthorities.
I remember one time down thecountry talking to a local

(10:36):
authority planner and she saidoh, that might be what you do up
in Dublin, but it's not what wewant here.
And I said but you've got 31planning authorities.
We've only got one planning actand one planning regulations or
one set of planning regulations.
We don't have 31interpretations of what should
be in a set of applicationdrawings.
So I looked at this and whatwas shocking was that the
average number of applicationsthat are invalidated and I'll

(10:57):
explain that in a minute whatthat means is 15.5%.
And what it meant was that inthe past you would be delighted
if your client got a permission.
And then in the 2000 Act theybrought out these much more
stringent rules about whatshould be in a plan application
and it came about within thefirst year or two that the local
authorities were told that if adrawing and if the

(11:18):
documentation that you get isnot compliant with the tick box
of the regulations that it shallbe invalidated.
So, in other words, you startagain.
So, like snakes and ladders,you go back down to zero and you
have to start again.
You have to do 10 of this orsix of that, like a kind of a
big version of Noah's Ark.
You have to have six of those,six of those, three of those,
one of those, the full page ofthe newspaper, not just part of

(11:39):
the newspaper, the full actualpage with a red box around the
site, notice and all thesedifferent things.
And I was looking at it.
Some local authorities to mewere off the Richter scale in
terms of invalidation.
So one local authority inparticular in the period I
looked between 2009 and 2020,had invalidated more than 30% of
all planning applications andthey received 186 per year,

(12:03):
which is less than one perworking day, and they
invalidated more than 30%.
So I would say, why don't theyjust put somebody at the front
desk and their job is this weekis to validate all the
applications before they comeinto the system and just go
through them and have a tick boxand tick them and then, if you
got all the tick boxes of allthe 31 authorities, they'd be
different.

(12:23):
So years ago I was down inLimerick.
I was looking on the walls ofthe planning authority and I was
thinking to myself thatwouldn't get through in Dublin
because Dublin would wantsomething slightly different
than they want in Limerick, butit's the same regulations.
So I wrote this report in thekind of vain hope that the
government might do something.
And what I said was and thiswasn't just a big complaint, but
I said if you had a paid andnot an opt-in, that you had to

(12:46):
pay either 10 euro for a one-offhouse or 100 euro for a scheme
of this size, or 1,000 euro fora scheme of that size.
You pay to the local authorityand they validate your scheme
over 24 hours and then it'svalidated.
So it's actually validated fromthe outset.
There's no such thing asinvalidation.
And I actually also said that onboard Panola, who's had a lot

(13:06):
of criticism.
But on board Panola have a verygood system of validation and
they have a very low rate ofinvalidating appeals because
they go through it all.
And in the SHDs there was avery low rate of invalidations
because and there were way morecomplex applications but they
weren't invalidated.
So invalidation means that youcould be eight weeks in waiting
for your decision and suddenlyyou get a letter from the local
authority saying this wasn't a avalid application because you

(13:30):
missed out.
You only had six.
Five drawings of the thirdfloor of the building and you
should have had six, yeah, sojust to put it, and I worked out
how much money the governmentwould have made in that period
had they brought it in, and inthe millions, and they could
have funded the whole planningsystem by just bringing in this
simple idea.

Speaker 1 (13:48):
And that's a simple thing for the government in
terms of revenue.
But there's other costsassociated with this, like the
delay that, things like that.
I had no idea first of all, itwas as high as 15%.
The delays that are introducedinto the entire development
cycle by stuff like that arevast.
Right, because people think, oh, it's eight weeks.
You just stick the applicationback in, like that's not how

(14:09):
that works, right, like you getthat invalidation.
You go back to your planningconsultant, your architect, all
the consultants, everyone has togo and get everything, perhaps
even print additional things,make sure, pay the application
again, send it all back overagain, wait a further eight
weeks and you could beinvalidated a second time.
If people wanted to go downthat road, instead of having a

(14:31):
scenario where they look at itand they go oh yeah, they're
missing this, and they just ringup the planning center and go
Tom, you idiot, you never sentin the newspaper notice.
Would you send it over to methere?
Correct, yeah, but that's notwhat happens there.

Speaker 2 (14:42):
Correct, yeah, but that's not what happens, no, and
then there's a funny thing thatin the guidelines that are
brought out they said thatthere's.
They talk about the concept ofde invalidation.
So in other words, it said inthe rare examples where a local
authority might invalidatesomething, an error, there's no
mechanism to re-validate it.
And they give an example we didone years ago where we got on
the day we were expecting adecision on a quarry application

(15:03):
, it came out that the thing hadbeen invalidated.
And I rang up the planner, whoI knew really well.
I said what the bloody hell isthis about?
And he says, oh, it seems thatyour client has already started
extracting the gravel.
And we said he hasn't, hehasn't.
And then he said, oh, no, no,they have.
And then we said that's thefield adjoining it that already
has permission the applicationsfor the next field, not the one

(15:24):
that your colleague has goneunchecked.
And he said, oh, sorry, so weneed to start again.
Now the government guidelinesays that in those rare inverted
commas instances where thelocal authority make a mess and
do it, that there should besuitable redress.
And they give the example thatthey should pay for a new site
notice.
So I've made the point.
And actually the other thing Ididn't mention at the start I

(15:44):
also do a bit of developmentfrom time to time and have done
two buildings, and so I haveincluding one during the
recession.
So I know what it's like tohave a bank breathing down the
back of your neck, looking forthe money, and I think to myself
I remember how much money wewere paying per month on
interest on a vacant site and ifI'd lost two months I worked

(16:05):
out what it costs us 20 000 euroI would have lost just on a
real, and mine wasn't a megascheme.
So if you're doing a schemethat's in the millions and
you're set back two monthsbecause of some error in a local
authority, are you going to say, well, hang on, I'm going to
get 456 euro to put an ad in thestar next tuesday, so
everything's, this is all fine,all right, we'll just move on
these things happen, so it'sjust wrong.

(16:26):
So the system is inherently andI kind of sound like I'm playing
to the gallery but it's againstdevelopers, it's for the public
, because they're always worriedabout the public.
But but the public don't livein houses unless the public,
unless the developers build them, and you can't have a system
that you've got invalidation.
You just can't.
Why isn't the't the localauthority?
If a local authority were topay €20,000 in a fine, they

(16:47):
wouldn't invalidate thingsincorrectly.

Speaker 1 (16:49):
Yeah, that's true, but then I mean the whole idea
of, yeah, local authorities andboard plan, because I know
that's a feature of the new Act,that there would be like fines
for not meeting statutorytimelines.

Speaker 2 (17:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:01):
I'll tell, public entities are being fined by the
government who fund them.
So yeah, I know.

Speaker 2 (17:08):
And I have to be very careful in this, in this talk,
because I don't kind of youdon't chriscise City Hall and
particularly being a planningconsultant, I mean, I have a lot
of time for and I defended themon a lot of radio shows and the
years.
But one thing that did annoy mewas that then chairperson in the
Rockets committee back I thinkin 2023, she was talking about

(17:28):
the fact of the so manystrategic housing development
schemes that had been delayedand so a developer pays 80,000
euro to make an application andthen they're delayed in the
planning appeals board and theboard were obliged to give back
10,000 euro to developers.
But a developer x pays 80 000and he or she gets back 10 000

(17:48):
and the board, the board uh, atthe time board chairperson at
the time referred to as awindfall gain for developers.
So you get me.
You you pay 80 000 for aservice.
You don't get it.
You get 10 000 back and that'scalled a windfall.
It's not.
It's and it's state money.
It's, it's your own money.
You're getting back one-eighthof the money that you paid to
the system.

Speaker 1 (18:09):
I just will add that to the list of absolutely crazy
things that have been said iniraq I don't want to criticize
them, but that to me is wrong.
No, look in fairness, they dotheir, they do their best, but
like it's just stuff like thatannoys me, not because, um, that
it matters, right, because itdoesn't matter, but, but like
it's just stuff like that annoysme, not because that it matters
, right, because it doesn'tmatter, but it's it's again this

(18:30):
idea of them and us, like, asyou point out, if you need, if
people are going to build houses, who's going to?
Who's going to build them?
Right?
We're going to build them,right.
So who's going to do theplanning?
Right?
We can't do that.
That has to be the planningauthorities.
Yeah, so that should besymbiosis, right, like we should
be working hand in glove tomake sure that things are done.

(18:51):
But that is not how the systemis set up.

Speaker 2 (18:53):
It's set up adversarially it's funny because
one I've just noticed in my 30or whatever odd years of
lecturing to students andsomething I want to get to maybe
is resources.
But I was looking around thisyear, 42 students have just
finished yesterday, on a Sunday,correcting the last of 42
essays for the students, andit's a really multicultural

(19:14):
class.
There's a complete mix ofstudents and there are students
from Ireland, there are studentsfrom the, there are students
from one Italian, there's aGerman girl, there are two guys
from Pakistan, about six Indians, about six Chinese, three
Americans and a Canadian and therest are Irish out of 42.

(19:35):
So it's really multicultural.
And one of the reasons Ilecture in UCD and I've been
very open about this is that Iuse it to find really good staff
members.
So my two co-directors that setup the company would be John
Gannon and Gavin, and Gavin'sthe current president of the
Planning Institute.
Both of those were formerstudents of mine.
I just asked them to come workwith us but I couldn't employ a

(19:55):
big chunk of the class I can'temploy, even if they want to
come work for me, because theycan't get visas to work in
Ireland.
Yeah, so we're actuallyemploying or educating people at
a master's degree level that wecan't employ Turf in the mouth
Because the critical skills listomits planners.
Yeah, and I was thinking aboutthis whether I should say this
or not because I have a friendof mine, ruth, who's a very good

(20:17):
podiatrist in Rathmines, and apodiatrist is on the list of
critical skills, but plannersaren't.
And there are excellentplanners, like the planner who
scored the highest in the masterdegree program in 2023 is an
Indian girl and she's reallyexcellent and they're really
good.
I mean, I was reading theessays Just really excellent

(20:37):
essays but I can't employ thembecause we can't get them jobs
in the country.
And we raised this throughGavin, through the Planning
Institute, has raised this loadsof times and the Department of
DETI, as they're called, cameback recently and said well, we
didn't know there was a need formore planners.
No one told us it was in thepaper recently and we got
something back from thejournalist, sent it to us and

(20:59):
said what do you think of this?
And they said they didn't knowit.
So on the critical skills listare podiatrists.
Now, last time I checked therewasn't a foot crisis in Ireland.
We have a housing crisis and Imade the comment at a conference
.
Sometimes things come into myhead.
I made the comment that thestate was like a basking shark,
going around taking in all theplanners, like plankton, and I

(21:21):
said we were losing staffmembers too.
I actually remember a lady inthe board panel a few years ago
said God, tom, you've got greatstaff.
Anybody who's come to the boardfrom your office is great.
And I said well, mary, can I?
I'd like to hang on to them.
Please Don't take my staff, butthe LDA and the LDA are really
good clients for us.
And and the LDA are really goodclients for us.
And I was reading John afterJohn Coleman said I didn't mean
it wasn't a criticism of the LDA, nor is it a criticism of the

(21:44):
OPR or anybody else, but thestate has thrown money at the
resources of planners, but wedon't have enough planners
generated.
So there are 42 planners thisyear in the master's programme,
but two years ago there werefive.
So during the recession therewere no planners going through
the system, or very few.
So it was a missing cohort ofplanners.
And if we could open our doorsto Indians, pakistanis,

(22:06):
canadians, new Zealanders, allthose people, americans and they
could come in.
So we have a really excellentplanner down in our clerk office
, gemma, who came from Canadaand we took six months to get
her into the country and it waslike she knows we said that some
days we're thinking God, I hopeshe better be good, because
this is a lot of effort, whereasyou can be a podiatrist and

(22:28):
come into our end on a criticalskills list, but you can't be a
planner, whereas the list hasgot town planners, architectural
technicians, all of those.
So it gives a heading and townplanning is in it, but the
actual list excludes townplanners.
And the ministerial action planback in October said that town
planners will be on the criticalskills list and in January or
in December the department saidwell, no one told us, so they're

(22:49):
not on the critical skills list.

Speaker 1 (22:51):
So there's only a certain number of resources.
What's annoying about stufflike that is that's a stroke of
a pen, fix right, correct.
Two words, two words, and itcan happen in 10 minutes, and
there's no need for any publicconsultation or all votes or
nothing.
The minister can just do thatand won't.

Speaker 2 (23:06):
The minister said.
Well, in fairness to theminister, the minister's action
plan has said we will do it,yeah, but like and then the
other department says well, noone told us.

Speaker 1 (23:20):
We don't know.
The thing that really gets mygoat about government at the
moment, and I think this is arelatively new thing, this kind
of finger pointing around theroom.
Oh yeah, but we didn't say thatthe minister, one person, can
pick up the phone, ring thesenior person in the Department
of Foreign Affairs and say addthat to the critical skills list
, do it today.
Yeah, and he has that power.
Yeah, agreed, and doesn't useit.

(23:42):
So I mean, we get onto this alot and I'm increasingly
beginning to lose my patience abit because I'm hearing again
and again and again all thesethings about solving the housing
crisis and how it's imperative.

Speaker 2 (23:56):
One thing.
That's just that I'm.
That, I think, was the rightthing to do, and I'm involved
with property industry and I'mone of the founding directors.
We were at the time of us backin 2011, and we were always
coming up with different ways oflooking at the system.
So Mark Fitzgerald was afounder member, michael O'Flynn,
the cork developer, etc.

(24:17):
Etc.
And Michael and I were talkingone day in 2016 about the system
and how it could be improvedand we were saying that there's
an inevitability, that it wasjust something I'd done,
analysis that I'd used for thestudents.
They were saying that 7% of allplanning applications go to a
Borponola or appeal 7%.
So 93% don't Okay, but that'sall planning applications.

(24:39):
That's even like a shed or yeah,so, but the department had
worked out between 2006 and 2016that 95% of all schemes of a
hundred or more houses orapartments or whatever, went to
the planning appeals board.
So it went from being 7% to 95.
So it was inevitable that theygo to the Planning Appeals Board
.
So we came up and said howcould we come up with a system

(25:04):
that if it's inevitable, it goesto the Planning Appeals Board?
What could happen?
And, in fairness to SimonCoveney, had been appointed as
Minister for Housing and he wascriticised because he went on
his holidays and he had said Iwill have an action plan for
housing the first 100 days ofbeing in office.
And remember the paper.
The examiner said a ministergoes on holidays while he's

(25:24):
doing his action plan.
But he did.
He delivered the action plan in100 days and part of that was
the introduction of thisstrategic housing development,
which was that you applydirectly to the planning appeals
board as opposed to the localauthority.
Now, that is something that, ifthe most frustrating thing I've
found in my career to date hasbeen the reaction to that system

(25:45):
, and it is because, well, firstof all, there was an article
written a few years ago that, asif the Minister was hoodwinked
into it.
It wasn't.
The Minister wrote to everybodyand put it publicly out that he
wanted people to makesubmissions on ways in which the
planning system could beimproved and we put forward
through property and the ideathat you just apply directly.

(26:07):
So I've been involved withGavin, my co-director, back in
the start of the business, withthe car up gas field, and
everything we did went to theplanning appeals board.
If they wanted to put a bicycleshed at the back, someone would
object to it.

Speaker 1 (26:19):
And that's because it was strategic infrastructure.
Right, it was on that list.

Speaker 2 (26:22):
No, it became, it triggered it.
I remember listening toBrandon's thing and other things
.
So it was one of the keytriggers in 2006, where they
introduced strategic housing orinfrastructure development,
where you apply directly to thePlanning Appeals Board.
So SHD, which is strategichousing development, is a form
of SID.
It's the same thing.
It's just for housing, asopposed to hospitals or runways.
And what really frustrates meabout the discourse on it for

(26:46):
want of a better phrase is thisinference that it somehow was
anti-democratic or a bypass tolocal authority.
It didn't, because the localauthority is obliged to engage.
You couldn't go directly to thePlanning and Appeal Department.
You, as developer, must go atleast once to the local
authority and sit down and gothrough the scheme and get an
opinion from the local authorityand feedback, and then, at a

(27:08):
certain trigger date, you couldthen go to the board.
So you had to go to the localauthority.
The other thing that's uniqueabout it is it's the only form
of development in which localcouncillors were invited to make
comments, so they're nototherwise.
There's no right of commentaryby a councillor on any form of
development other than strategichousing development.
And they did.

(27:29):
And the criticism of some ofthese government initiatives is
oh well, they're just paper.
But, in fairness, the ActionPlan for Housing 2016 said we
will introduce fast trackplanning, as it was called.
It was deemed to be fast track,but actually didn't turn out to
be fast track.
But we will introduce fasttrack planning, as it was called
.
It was deemed to be fast trackbut actually didn't turn out to
be fast track, but we willintroduce it and he did it.
So he did what he said he woulddo and there's.
So there's a lot of goodinitiatives in these action
plans.
They just take so long and youcan see with the planning act,

(27:50):
it's just such a complexdocument.
I mean the amount of seniorcouncil and declan brazil, the
planning consultant, wasinvolved.
There's a lot of people andthere's just so much legislation
thrown at us and case law andthey're trying to plug every gap
.
It's like a big dyke trying tofill all the holes.

Speaker 1 (28:08):
If you're asking everyone's opinion, that's what
you're going to end up with.
When people say that thesethings are anti-democratic, they
really don't understand whatdemocracy is, because democracy
is the triumph of the many overthe few.
Right, yeah, common good.
The common good and whathappens actually in the planning
system is the triumph of thefew over the many, because the

(28:28):
common good is build houses.
And the way to prevent that isan individual just be one person
can hold up housing for athousand people, for years yeah
yeah, for 20 euro, yeah.
So I mean, I actually had thisdebate with Simon Coveney a
number of years ago aboutsomething about the Apple data
center.
So I asked him a question at aconference.

(28:49):
I asked did he think it wasundemocratic that one person who
it turned out was actually acompetitor wanted Apple to buy
his land for a data center,could hold up something as
monumental as that, particularlygiven where it was going to be?
And he kind of I think he kindof knew the answer but couldn't

(29:09):
give it publicly, but that wasin 2015.

Speaker 2 (29:14):
About that, jen, you always have this.
It's like one of these thingslike years ago why can't I do
something?
Oh, foot and mouth.
Why can't I do something?
Oh, covid, why can't I dosomething in planning?
Oh, the R-House Convention.
And it gets dragged intoeverything as if, oh well then,
oh, better not ask.
Yeah, I mean the mostdemocratic planning system in
the world.
So for 20 euro.
And some of the students arebemused because what's more

(29:35):
mature, like just older Americanstudents, and they're kind of
bemused by the fact that inIreland, that you don't have to
live in Ireland to object to anIrish scheme.
You could live, they could livein Wyoming or Kansas or
whatever and object to somethingin Ireland and send over 20
euro on their credit card andhold up a scheme or have the
right to hold up a scheme, yeah,I mean, and I mean America

(29:55):
obviously has.

Speaker 1 (29:57):
We won't get into it, but it has its drawbacks.
One of the things I thought wasinteresting this week just
what's gone on in Californiawith the fires, that the
governor of California said he'sgoing to waive all of planning
laws in California to allowpeople to rebuild their houses
with zero red tape.
So they're not going to have to, they just have to build a
house the same way it was, andso there's going to be no

(30:18):
process.
Yeah, we're in Ireland plant, ifyou're building burns down,
your planning mission burns withit, so you're going to start
again.
Where are we with planningpermissions right now?
Do you have, do you have any?

Speaker 2 (30:27):
well, we, should be building 60 000 units per annum.
We're not.
We're building around 30 000,okay so we're about halfway down
.
There's a thing a few monthsago for the irish house builders
association.
I'm looking at all thedifferent range of figures so
there was no agreement amongstate reports as to how many
units were built or should bebuilt.

Speaker 1 (30:45):
But just to stop you there for a second, there's no
agreement on how many units werebuilt.
No, no, should be built, okay.

Speaker 2 (30:51):
Well, obviously, for were built was kind of a dispute
over the ESB figures used to beused.
And then people said, well, ifyou put a shed out the back of
your house and put a plug intoit, that would be deemed to be a
unit.
And they've got over that.

Speaker 1 (31:03):
So now we know how many units are being built.

Speaker 2 (31:06):
Do we?

Speaker 1 (31:06):
know how many are getting planning.

Speaker 2 (31:09):
We do, yeah, because that's in the.
So about 64% of all permissionsare residential, across
everything.
So across everything.
So the planning is the housingis the biggest part of all the
permissions.
And there's the data come outevery year and they tell you how
many planning permissions andhow many are granted, how many
are refused, and there's quite abig disparity between certain
local authorities as to whetherthey're the most likely to grant

(31:31):
or refuse.
So there actually is noconsistency across the 31 local
authorities.
Some have a very high rate ofrefusal, some local authorities.
Some have a very high rate ofrefusal, some have a very low
rate of refusal and some have.
I did that part of the analysis.
We looked at those which had ahigh rate of invalidation and
did they also have a high rateof refusal, and there was no
real correlation.
Some had high invalidation, lowrefusal, others had low

(31:52):
invalidation, high refusal,others had a mixture of all
kinds.

Speaker 1 (31:54):
So it's all over the map.

Speaker 2 (31:56):
Yeah, okay, but actually interesting about the
SHD, the strategic housingdevelopment thing, is that it
was like as if you know,sometimes the debate is like as
if something's a contagion.
For example, the two thingsthat are banned under Irish
planning law are one thatinvolves under section 37,
involves nuclear fusion orfission, so we can't.

(32:16):
The state is precluded fromgranting permission.
That involves nuclear fission,so we can't build.
We can't build nuclear powerstations and the other and I've
heard you talk about it in yourbuild programs before is the
dreaded co-living and build torent the two dreadful things
that we could.
So nuclear power stations,co-living and build to rent,

(32:38):
according to some industrycomment.

Speaker 1 (32:40):
Well, I wouldn't call them industry commentators.
Some people in the media uh,co-living is worse than a
nuclear power station.

Speaker 2 (32:46):
Yeah, the one just finished, actually in donnybrook
.
I'm dying to see what it's likewhen it's open, but I've been
to one out in black in dunlaireand I've seen some of the uk and
I mean to me that would reallyanger me but again it's like
that's just more of the them andus thing, right?

Speaker 1 (32:58):
Like the co-living people are like it's disgraceful
, you're building bedsits Like.
These are not bedsits, right.

Speaker 2 (33:04):
We had five in our office.
We had five schemes ingestation in our office.
The day that we heard that theywere all shut down, yeah, five
projects went down the drain.
And co-living anybody wants toknow what it's like.
It's like a slightly olderversion of student housing.
It's people who would be intheir 20s or 30s or people
moving over to Ireland.
Yeah, but it's a better versionof what goes on.

Speaker 1 (33:24):
anyway, like everybody that I know in college
went and rented a house inRathmines and there was six or
eight or sometimes 12 people,even though there might only
have been six rooms, and it wasgreat crack and everyone was
getting pissed and maybe goingto college on the side, and it
was great crack and everyone wasgetting pissed and maybe going
to college on the side and itwas a great time, right, but
they were old houses, they wereunsuitable, they were energy

(33:47):
inefficient, they were terrible.
And co-living is formalisingthat and saying, okay, you're
getting a clean bedroom and yourown bathroom, you're going to
share a kitchen with yourroommates and you can still get
pissed and have the crack.

Speaker 2 (34:04):
What mates?
And you can still get pissedand have the crack, yeah, and
it's what's wrong with that?
Well, it's, you can't.
The last thing you do in ahousing crisis is to is to
preclude certain forms of tenure.
You have to, to me.
You have to keep all typesavailable.
And the thing with years agothey were banned bedsits and
then they came back in by theback door.
About two years later it waskind of snuck back in again.
You got bedsits again.
Yeah, because they realizedwell, where do all the people in
Rathmines who work in whatever,who lived in the 10% of
Rathmines were bedsits?
Where do they all live?
Those are people, all displaced.

Speaker 1 (34:23):
Yeah, how are you going to provide very, very low
costs for them, Because it's allwell and good, like all the
high-minded stuff that goes onabout?
Oh, we need to lower housingcosts and I heard some
absolutely a cost of anythingwhen it gets involved.

Speaker 2 (34:37):
Actually, I haven't thought of it great.
Imagine on a half four on aFriday when you've got kind of
wet concrete and you need tohave it floated or whatever, and
you say to a guy well, I needto stay on and finish off that
job because it's half four on aFriday, I'm not going to be here
, when I hear people talk aboutthat and you know, have to of
oxygen to this stuff why arethey never asked Give us one

(34:59):
example of when the state everbuilt anything cost-effectively,
like what's in history.
I'll tell you a brilliant placeand you should go down and see
it.
Everybody in Ireland should goand look at it.
I have to mention my classmatesfrom planning.
We've had great.
I'm still friendly.
We left in 1989 and we stillare on WhatsApp and we talk all
the time and some of myclassmates two of my classmates

(35:20):
were former board members.
I couldn't talk to them whetherthey were board members One
might be the planning regulator,a very good friend of mine and
the others some had been boardinspectors and others local
authorities and we're allfriends, but we all
fundamentally well.
I would fundamentally disagreewith most of them about planning
.
We're still all great friends,but we go on a trip every year.
Around September we went toArdna, croatia, oh yeah, and

(35:44):
it's absolutely fascinating thatplace.
It's the big, it's a waterhydroelectric and we were all
debating how difficult it wouldbe to get planning permission to
build that today.
Yeah, you wouldn't years it was1929 and they built something
like a nine kilometre long canal.
They built to create it and youjust couldn't get it through

(36:05):
now.
But it's fantastic and it'sdone by like there's a brilliant
story.

Speaker 1 (36:09):
Siemens built it, didn't they?
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (36:11):
My father-in-law's German.
He always says it's not Siemens, it's Siemens.
But he always told me aboutthat.
But what amazed me about that?
Sorry I digress, but they had awarehouse down there that
actually has parts that Siemensprovided when they built it that
have never been used because itwas so good and the Irish state
I mean the Irish state did afantastic job with that.

Speaker 1 (36:33):
There's one that was a hundred years ago, but we
could do it then.

Speaker 2 (36:36):
And it's everybody who's involved in the property
business or are interested in itshould go and look at it.
It's an incredible place.
Yeah, I've been there a fewtimes.
There's a great quote actuallyfrom Sean Lamass.
When he was open to it he wastalking about women.
Should be that the.
It was just funny.
He was saying that a woman,when she's getting married,
shouldn't be asking her husbandhow much road frontage he has.

(36:57):
But what's his ability to get afridge and a freezer and all
these electrical?
Because it was so unique, itwas just it's like something
from the dark ages, but it'sjust funny it was funny, you
know on tinder.

Speaker 1 (37:09):
You can just ask the guy what his access to
appliances.

Speaker 2 (37:15):
My, I just thought it was amusing because it just
shows you how far we've moved onin one way in terms of that and
social norms and what'sacceptable, what's not
acceptable, but how far wehaven't moved on in terms of
infrastructure.

Speaker 1 (37:26):
But we've gotten a bit like the Romans We've
decided that we've won and thatnow we get to have all of these
ideals of perfection.
And we, you know we're failingvery, very badly at providing
basic infrastructure to ourcitizens.

Speaker 2 (37:45):
Well, it was the thing that just struck me as
well.
I was doing a bit of research afew years ago about this, about
Australia.
They have a document,infrastructure Australia, and
it's come out in February everyyear and it lists off the top
100 pieces of infrastructurethat are required in Australia,
in order of preference.
Number one is the mostimportant, number two is the
second.
Number three is this Whereas inIreland you could say, well, it
could be the road betweenLimerick and Cork, or perhaps

(38:08):
it's the airport runway, or it'sthe children's hospital or
whatever it is, but we can'tagree.

Speaker 1 (38:14):
No, we can't.
We can't agree on what the mostimportant thing is.
We can't agree on what the mostimportant thing is.
We can't agree on how to do it.
We can't agree when to do it.
We can't agree what it shouldcost.
Like the children's hospital isa great example.
That was something that wasdesperately needed.
It was massively under budgetedfor and now it's costing what
it's costing.

(38:35):
But the prevailing wisdom isit's over budget.
It's not over budget.
It's just that the budget thatwas created for it was nonsense.

Speaker 2 (38:42):
right For a building of that size and scale, or
things have moved on, and thingshave moved on right the known
knowns and the unknown unknownsand the Ukrainian war.
Look, who's to know that wasgoing to happen?
Yeah, and the cost of things.

Speaker 1 (38:51):
As for us like concrete cost of putting
concrete structures doubled infive years.
So, like all of these things,we carry on as though we, with
this expectation of perfection,we're not.
No one is able to meet thosestandards, and so then we fall
down, and then the fingerpointing starts and the blame
game starts.

Speaker 2 (39:10):
Well, that's the thing about the standards.
I was talking to the studentsjust because I find it
fascinating because I've got myown children are of similar age.
Two of my older daughters aresimilar age to the students I'd
be teaching at UCD and I'masking them, because they're
multicultural and differentbackgrounds, how many of them of
the 42 in the class lived inthe student accommodation in UCD
?
And none of them did so.
It was too expensive, all right, because it, like it's really

(39:32):
high quality studentaccommodation.
I think some of the standards Imean probably it's this you
could, we could talk for an hourand a half and this could be
synopsized.
Oh, he's looking for a dumbingdown of standards.
No, I'm not.
I'm just saying that sometimesthe perfect is the enemy of the
good, as Voltaire said, thatsometimes you're trying to get
the standards are so high thatthey might as well live in
hotels as live in student homes.

Speaker 1 (39:51):
Well, Michael Flynn has said this numerous times
when he's like you would say,there's only.
Mercedes or BMWs are allowed,right, no one can have a Dacia.
Yeah, yeah, because some peoplecan only afford a Dacia.
Still gets them around right.
And like the idea that we sayoh well, no, we want dumbing
down standards because thedevelopers want profit.

(40:11):
You could very quickly getaround that by saying you're
allowed, build houses to aslightly lower standard, but
price cap them.
You know, uh, if it's an arated house, it's uncapped.
If it's a b rated house, it hasto be capped at this price and
that's indexed right.
So so you can say all right,the cost saving that you're
going to gain is going to go inthe form of cheaper housing.

(40:33):
That's easily.
That could easily beaccomplished.
They do it with the help to buygrant.
They cap the price that theyhelp to buy grant.
Yeah, uh is for, and you know alot of these things.
When it comes to the energyefficiency measures, there are
things that can be upgradedlater, like.
So if people can get theirstart and get on the housing

(40:54):
ladder, it's okay.
Maybe they can't afford anA-rated house in the area that
they want to live in, but theycan afford a B-rated one.
And then you know, five, eightyears from now they say, oh,
we've made extra money, we cando more insulation, we can put a
heat pump in, we can replacethe windows, you know.
But there's this idea that, no,no, no, the only thing we can

(41:14):
build is the absolute bestversion of it, and if you can't
afford that, then the state willpay for it.

Speaker 2 (41:19):
Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (41:27):
Of course the state will pay for it.
Yeah, of course the state can'tpay for it because there's so
much of it needed.
So that's the great lie that'sbeing told all the time that the
state steps in everywhere andpays for everything.
State has limited funds,there's as much, and all those
people don't want you to believethat's true.
It is true.
So then we end up not doing it,and then you have a whole
generation of people can'tafford to buy a house.
They go to australia, they gowherever, and or they stay and
endure a terrible quality oflife.

Speaker 2 (41:45):
Yeah, we had an excellent planner with us a few
years ago, aisling, and she wentoff to London because the
landlord wanted their house backand Aisling and all her
colleagues in the house, ratherthan waste time trying to find
somewhere in Dublin, just movedto London.
Yeah, and another friend ofmine, his son and seven of his
friends, all went to Melbournebecause they just couldn't get
accommodation in this country.

Speaker 1 (42:06):
Yeah, it's just.

Speaker 2 (42:08):
We should be building houses and the other thing I
would do.
Well, I don't want to bejumping one of your questions,
but I ban politicians fromobjecting to housing.

Speaker 1 (42:16):
Yeah, well, that should have happened a long time
ago.

Speaker 2 (42:18):
You've got councillors who zone land.
They're the ones who have thepower to zone the land and then
they go on behalf of aconstituent then object to it.
I had one years ago where apolitician she had written in in
favour of the scheme andopposed the same scheme.
She'd written in twice onbehalf of two different people,
one supporting it and onecriticalising it.
It was the same scheme.
I didn't want to embarrass herbut it was just nuts.

Speaker 1 (42:40):
Okay, we're just going to turn into a rant, right
?
So I'm going to throw someacronyms at you, because there
is a lot of people that listento this that aren't actually in
our industry and I don't know.
They must not have very activesocial lives to be listening to
me droning on, but they do so.
They do it to learn, so we'regoing to try and teach them.

Speaker 2 (42:59):
Stz what is that?
Okay, strategic developmentzone.
Actually, one of my lecturersin UCD.
I have one called planning is aload of TLA's which is planning
is a load of three letteracronyms and the only one that
isn't the three lettersobviously LRD, because that's a
large scale read even though itis three letters, but it's
actually four words.
So STZ is a strategicdevelopment zone.

(43:19):
There are 11 of them in thecountry.
The first one was Adamstown,the last one was Knock Airport
and it was designated when Ithink the Taoiseach at the time
may have been from Mayo, if Iremember rightly.
But so there was and there areobviously the ones.
Poolbag.
We're involved in doing that inDublin.
We're involved down atDocklands.

Speaker 1 (43:41):
Are they still?
They're not being createdanymore.

Speaker 2 (43:44):
No, sorry, when the new act kicks in commences, they
can't be created anymore.
So they can be created now, andwe did make a submission on
behalf of a major universitydown in might be in Limerick a
few months ago to have the 12thone created.
So an STZ is Okay.
I bring it back to this.
So in 2000, they introducedthis concept of strategic
development zone under the 2000Planning Act and it was designed

(44:08):
for the IDA.
Because the IDA were frustratedthat they had all this foreign
direct investment coming in andthey just said we can't get
permission in Ireland, it takestoo long.
So they brought in this systemthat in an STZ it's a plan-led
development, so a planningscheme is prepared.
Now first of all the governmentit's.
It's one of the, it's the onlyexample where the government,

(44:28):
rather than the localcouncillors, designate land.
So the Taoiseach of the day,responding to his or her
minister for the environment,designates land that is deemed
to be of strategic, national orsocial importance to the state.
And it works out to be 1,659hectares of Ireland.

(44:49):
So it's a very small part.
It's 0.02% of the state is anSDZ and the other 99.98% isn't
an SDZ, so that's deemed bycouncillors.
So these are really the kind ofthe primus among the first
among equal.
These are the key bits of landthat in the country are
designated by the state todeliver of development of

(45:10):
economic or social importance.
And after, in the machinationsof the 2000 Act, they actually,
at the last minute, added inresidential, and the bizarre
thing is that most of theschemes to date have been
residential.
And I did a report back in 2021when I was being frustrated by

(45:31):
the criticism that strategichousing development was getting
In.
That I looked at, I tried tomake a comparison of SHD and SDZ
, so strategic housingdevelopment versus strategic
development zones, because onewas deemed to be developer-led
planning and the SHDs weredeemed to be plan-led
development, which I've alwaysfound is a very annoying
argument, because it isn't sosimple that if a developer puts
it forward it's bad, if the SAVEputs it forward, it's good.

(45:51):
It's not that simple anargument.
So the SDZs.
So back in 2006, or sorry, 2021or 2, we worked out of the 11
SDZs, six of them hadn'tactually commenced.
So there's one Clon Magaddonoutside Meath.
Nothing had happened.

Speaker 1 (46:10):
Other is Monarch Magaddon.
I know the well-known.

Speaker 2 (46:13):
It's outside Navan.

Speaker 1 (46:16):
And there's an SDZ.

Speaker 2 (46:17):
An SDZ.
You know, the Minister for theenvironment may have been from
me at the time.
There's actually a very strongcorrelation between the
ministers.
Who the minister's from, butthey were designated anyway,
that's just a coincidence.

Speaker 1 (46:26):
These things are written down in legislation
rather than Well, they'redesignated by the government,
yeah, and then the so of the 11,10.

Speaker 2 (46:38):
Sorry, a development agency has to bring forward a
scheme called a planning schemethat is then set in stone.
That is basically the scheme.
So they do the whole design.
Yeah, that's a developmentagency, but the development
agency in 10 of the 11 cases isthe local authority.
So in grange, gorman is theonly example where it had its
own bespoke development agency,independent of the local
authority.

(46:58):
Okay, and um, they, that's thatwas to do do the university and
the healthcare.
So those are areas.
And then the other ones wouldbe Cherrywood.
So you've had on your podcastbefore Brian Moore, so Brian
would be the major developer outin Cherrywood.
You've got Johnny Ronan in PoolBeg with Lioncore, you've got

(47:21):
the one in the Grand Canal docksin Dublin and the North Lots,
johnny and others, and theCentral Bank and the Convention
Centre.
All those are in it.
That area is being done out.
Then there's Hansfield, there'sMonard in Cork, there is the
North Quays in Waterford.
There is so mainly around theDublin area and Meath and the

(47:46):
major cities, and then obviouslyover in Knock as well.
Okay, so that's SDZs, right,strategic Development Zones, and
those have planning schemes andplanning schemes live beyond
the life of a development planand as long as you build within
accordance with your planningscheme, there's no appeal
mechanism.
So once on board Panola andusually is on board Panola in
the case of, I think, waterfordand Knock is a local authority

(48:07):
there's no appeals.
So people can write in anappeal about the planning scheme
, but once the board approves it, that's it and the developer
gets permission and there's noappeal mechanism and there's no
provision for judicial review.
There is, but there hasn't been.
Well, there was in the bizarreone.
The judicial review in Docklandswas a bizarre one because the

(48:28):
Minister, owen Murphy, inDecember 2018, told all the
local authorities to go away andrevise their planning schemes
to have greater height, andDublin City Council did a review
.
The board took about a year anda half to no three years
actually to determine it andthey came back and refused.
So Borponola refused DublinCity Council's amendments.
He said they were too low, theyhadn't gone far enough, and

(48:51):
Dublin City Council judiciallyreviewed the board.
That's right.
So I think the minister was nothugely impressed by having one
entity of the state judiciallyreviewing another entity of the
state.

Speaker 1 (49:02):
Yeah, it was a bit.

Speaker 2 (49:02):
Yeah, so that's been, but there have been very few
and they tend to be successfulin the sense that they they give
some certainty to developers,but the problem is the IDA has
never used it.
So the IDA has never been aproponent of, or never like it
was built for them, but they'venever used it.
They never used it.
Okay, and because it'ssometimes a bit tricky, because
you're sometimes you're crystalball gazing what some FDI might

(49:25):
want in three years' time, andit shall be this metres by that
metre by that metre.

Speaker 1 (49:28):
Yeah, and then you can't change it right?

Speaker 2 (49:30):
Or you can change it with extreme difficulty.
It's really difficult to changeit Right, okay, all right.

Speaker 1 (49:34):
So that's STZs, shds we've talked about Strategic
Housing, development, housingdevelopment.

Speaker 2 (49:39):
Yeah, which is a form of SID, which is strategic
infrastructure development.
Right, it just means that youapply ultimately to the Planning
Appeals Board and not to thelocal authority.

Speaker 1 (49:47):
Yeah, because it's going there anyway, so you might
as well skip a step right, butyou go via the local authority,
you talk to the local authorityand you get all their opinions
on it.
Okay, so we won't delveresidential development is the
replacement of SHD, okay why isit different?

Speaker 2 (50:03):
it's okay because, apart from it's, three letters.

Speaker 1 (50:05):
Yeah, it should be four letters.

Speaker 2 (50:07):
I'm a bit of a pedant about that, but it's different
because, well, it's the same asthe conventional system.
To me, it's not much differentthan a conventional
planification because in an SHDyou go negotiate with, they're
no longer allowed, althoughthere are 27 of them still
sitting in a Borpilola waitingto be determined, which is
another story Actually 28.

Speaker 1 (50:28):
Oh, it's 28, is it?
It was 27,.
But we had one that wasjudicially reviewed and was
quashed.
And last week or two weeks ago,we got a letter, and this is
three years ago.
We got a letter, and this isthree years ago.
We got a letter from board planall saying that the high court
has remitted the permission backto them and they're deciding it
again now.
Okay, yeah, so three yearslater they're starting.

Speaker 2 (50:49):
So we have another shd that we thought was dead,
that is I mean I'm sure lazarushas come back to it.

Speaker 1 (50:54):
Well, lazarus continued to live for a little
while.
I'm not so confident about this, but anyway, sorry for
interrupting no, so, um.

Speaker 2 (51:01):
So we're just talking there about the.

Speaker 1 (51:04):
About the LRD.
The LRD, they're conventionalplanning permissions, really.

Speaker 2 (51:07):
So the SHD was brought out in 2006, mooted in
2016, came out in 2017, and ithad a defined life.
So you often see media reportsabout the abandoned SHD and the
dreadful system.
And it was dumped and abandonedand was in the programme for
know the dreadful system.
And it was dumped and abandonedand was in the program for
government to get rid of it, butit was actually always in the

(51:28):
legislation that it had adefined life.
It was never designed to bethere forever.
It was there for a short periodof time and actually was
extended once by the government,as was allowed under
legislation.
So it was brought out for adefined period and then they
deemed it to be a success.
Success because my point I'dmade is that SHD, which is the
dreaded developer-led planning,had delivered way more
residential units than the SDZs.

(51:51):
So the SDZs had worked out, inthe 20 years between 2001 and
2021, had actually granted 6,000residential units, even though
it was held up as this fantasticsystem in terms of houses,
whereas the SHD, in three years,had delivered a multiple of it.

Speaker 1 (52:05):
It's as though that there was incentives.

Speaker 2 (52:07):
Yeah, so the LRD was brought in as a means of.
So it is a hundred or moreresidential units or 200 or more
bed spaces in studentaccommodation, which is the same
as the SHD, but you can have upto 30% extra floor space which
is commercial, whereas an SHDwas 15% Right.

(52:28):
So the SHD scheme.
So you couldn't do mixed usedevelopment with SHD we were
doing one or two and we wereliterally kind of Jesuitical
arguments about how can we makeit well, it's 14.9%, or it's
14.9% or 5%, and you couldn'trisk having an extra square
metre, because then the thingwouldn't be SHD Right.

Speaker 1 (52:46):
So an LRD.
It was very inflexible.
Actually, it was veryinflexible from that point of
view.

Speaker 2 (52:50):
So the LRD, thankfully, has got a 30%, so it
can have up to 30% of otheruses.
So it should be commercial orretail, whatever it is, and
you've got the housing is 100units or 200 bed spaces, right,
and you apply in the past in theSHD, in the normal system you
apply to your local authority,one of the 31.

(53:11):
And in SHD you apply to theboard, having spoken to the
local authority.

Speaker 1 (53:18):
but in LRD you apply now to the council again, yeah,
and then you're open to appealand there's a statutory process
that you go through fortimelines, right, there's a
stage one, stage two, stagethree we're doing one at the
moment it's the only reason Iknow this and it's like
Byzantine dates and you have tohave this report and it's
actually the stage two or three,I can't remember.

Speaker 2 (53:40):
Well, it's good because everybody knows the
rules.
That's the good thing about it.
Everybody knows the rules,which is good, right and also
the thing that was really goodabout SHD is the first time ever
that the local authority wasobliged to bring all the people
to the meeting.
Because in the past you go infor a development.

Speaker 1 (53:52):
It could be a major development and you meet the
planners and they didn't come tothe meeting.

Speaker 2 (53:59):
And now, with these big schemes, they have to bring
all the people to the table.

Speaker 1 (54:03):
So, you've got someone from roads ecology and
they all sit around the tableand they can all give their
opinions and, in fairness, Ihave noticed that they've gotten
much better at that Now thatthings are all done on teams and
they all show up which is a bigimprovement.

Speaker 2 (54:18):
Well, it's helpful, because then you can see, and
then you ask them to engage aswell because you want someone
not to keep.
You want anybody quiet at themeeting.
If there's something to be said, say it.
Yeah, say it then so we canchange it right and not end up
right.
And then the other thing aboutLRD, the large-scale residential
development is that there'svery limited opportunity to ask
for further information.
They can't ask, whereas in anormal application there's

(54:39):
almost a default.
It says under legislation thata local authority.
So you lodge an application andsay, just take a conventional
planning application.
You lodge an application and inthe first five weeks members of
the public can pay €20 to makewhat they call submissions or
observations, which 99 times outof 100 are opposed to the
scheme.
But sometimes you get peoplewriting in and saying they
support it.
I send the odd letter supportin.

(55:01):
Actually I did an oral hearingyears ago where I was acting for
all the people who were for thescheme and I was driving all
the third parties at the oralhearing mad because they kept
saying we're all opposed to it.
I'd say, sorry, we're not.
Yeah, every five minutes latersorry, we're not.

Speaker 1 (55:15):
Sorry, we're not.
There's a group Build Homes.
We're trying to actually getthem on the podcast and they
coordinate people to writeletters of support for
development.

Speaker 2 (55:26):
It's a group of young people that started this thing
Who'd like to live somewhere?

Speaker 1 (55:29):
you mean, who'd like to live somewhere?
Yeah, yeah.
The YIMBYs right and we spoketo in season one Brian, a guy
from California.
Oh, the YIMBYs, the YIMBYs,yeah, one, so they're actually
they're a bit more serious, likethey have a lot of staff, a lot
of funding to try and drivestuff on, whereas this is like
an activist-led thing in the UKand like they're amazing,

(55:50):
they're going around, they'regoing to council meetings,
they're speaking up, they'reshowing like they're doing.
They can be really actuallyquite powerful.

Speaker 2 (56:02):
We'd won one about two years ago.
It was one Saturday.
We've a WhatsApp of where Ilive and we've an SHD scheme
quite close and one of myneighbours was saying, oh, isn't
it fantastic that it's beenjudicially reviewed?
And I was sitting there saying,well, I could say nothing, I
could get on with my lifebecause it is Saturday, or I
could say what I really think.
So I said what I really think.
So I said what I really thought, and it led to hours of back

(56:23):
and forward, back and forward,and most of the people were
opposed to what I was saying.
I was saying, well, weshouldn't have it.
We're like the place is bigenough in Milltown, that's big
enough.
And I said, no, it's not, itkeeps growing.
And I used the analogy.
I got the.
There's a book written in 1837by Lawrence, where he went
around um around Ireland and hewrote about places and he quoted
his description of Milltown inDublin and said you wouldn't

(56:47):
recognise it because the placechanged.
And then there's a photo.
A really good book came outabout Milltown and showed
something in 1953, an aerialphotograph.
It's fascinating, but peopleare struggling Where's that
building?
That wasn't there.
And things are built all thetime and people seem to think
that places are static, but theydon't.
They evolve all the time.

Speaker 1 (57:03):
Yeah well, when you are at the centre of your own
universe, you do believe thateverything else is moving around
you.

Speaker 2 (57:08):
So the state we live in was built in 1936 and before
that was the back garden of abig house.
Yeah, and all these places are,if you look around, of Clonsky
Castle.
But now it's housing.
So you need to build houses.
We need, as I often said, it'seither Ashburn or Melbourne.
So we either build houses forour children in Ireland or
they're going to disappear.

Speaker 1 (57:27):
Yeah, too right, I have one more.
I have two more acronyms, okay.

Speaker 2 (57:37):
Wait, maybe I have three.
No, okay, it's two.
Udz, okay, udzs.
So UDZs are urban developmentzones, so the SDZs, of which
there are 11, they can't createany more, they've reached.
That would be sorry, unless theminister brings one in now,
before the new planning actcomes in.
But in the new planning actyou'll have urban development
zones and urban developmentzones would be they'd be things

(58:00):
called candidate urbandevelopment zones, where at the
moment the SDZs are fordevelopment of economic or
social importance to the stateand the UDZs will be for
economic, social orenvironmental importance to the
state and it will be areas thata local authority will be
requested by the minister forall, 31 local authorities will

(58:22):
be sent off to look forcandidates as UDZs.
So, as I said, at the momentwe've 13, we've 31 local
authorities, we've got 13 SDZsso, and Dublin's got the lion's
share of them.
So there's lots of counties inIreland that don't have, like
Limerick or Leitrim doesn't havea UDZ doesn't have an SDZ, so
these the government will sendoff.

(58:45):
the minister will tell localauthorities to go away and
provide these, identify sitesthat could be candidate urban
development zones, and then itwill go.
Eventually the development planwill have to be changed to
allow and the development planswill have 10 year lives.
So they'll have to beidentified in a development plan
that this area has been pickedas a candidate urban development
zone.
There's a framework preparedfor it by the local authority

(59:05):
and then it's like an SDZ.
It goes to the planning appealsboard and a planning scheme is
put in place for it.
So there might be more of themthey're just smaller versions of
SDZs but there might be more ofthem and then the local
authorities are supposed to bethe development agencies.
So the local authorities are toprepare these planning schemes.
And in the government document afew years ago about local area

(59:27):
plans they said that developerscan't put forward local area
plans.
So in the past a developer saidI know you guys are really busy
We'll do one for you, we'llgive it to you, you can have it
democratically assessed by yourcouncillors and we'll bring it
forward as a scheme.
And it was written in thatdevelopers couldn't do it.
But who can do it?
Children.
The guidelines on local areaplans say that they must take on

(59:48):
board the views of children.
So I jokingly said to mychildren a few years ago any
chance one of you would sendthis in for me, because I'm
acting for this developer.
He owns the land.
He's not automatically you'renot automatically obliged to
talk to the landowner, but youare obliged under legislation to

(01:00:09):
talk to children.
So if you were to send in thedocument and sign it, victoria,
who's now in her mid-20s andsign at age six, it'll have to
be taken on board.
It's just you couldn't make itup jesus christ, um, okay, um,
all right.
Last one lap local area planslike mini development plans so
they're done for an area likeGoatstown in Dublin or some part
of Cork or some part ofLimerick.
There's a local area planprepared by a local authority

(01:00:31):
and it's not adopted by the.
It's adopted by the localauthority and it sets out kind
of a framework for developmentof the area.
And it might be it's given itspower by the development plan.
So for example, at Goldstownthey wanted a civic square and
buildings should be this, thatand the other height.
But it's it's appealable.

Speaker 1 (01:00:48):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:00:49):
And it's.
It's a kind of a.
It gives a.
It's a framework for developersto understand what they can and
can't build.

Speaker 1 (01:00:54):
Right, so instead of like to be zoned for residential
, and it's maybe X number ofhectares, but that's it, it's
just residential, and then afterthat we'll figure it out.

Speaker 2 (01:01:04):
You might have to read your housing mix or
something like that, but itdoesn't say we need a civic
square there.

Speaker 1 (01:01:10):
Yeah, it doesn't dictate right.
They dictate that, but the LAPdictates.

Speaker 2 (01:01:13):
It says there should be a school there and should be
civic plaza there and thereshould be buildings here, and
the mix of uses should be this,or it's kind of relatively
prescriptive.

Speaker 1 (01:01:21):
Yeah, so like it's a good idea.

Speaker 2 (01:01:23):
In theory, yeah, if it's well written.
If it's well written and ifit's enforced.

Speaker 1 (01:01:27):
One thing that I've read about recently with the
LAPs is when they expire becausethey are, for they're separate.
They're in the development plan, but they're separate, right.

Speaker 2 (01:01:38):
And there are 350 in the country.

Speaker 1 (01:01:41):
Right, yeah, but they , but they can expire separate
to the development plan.

Speaker 2 (01:01:44):
They can.
They have a different life.
They have a different liferight.

Speaker 1 (01:01:46):
So what happens when a piece of land has an LAP on it
and the LAP has expired?

Speaker 2 (01:01:52):
A local authority or the board could say we can't
grant you permission becauseyou're non-compliant with the
LAP that has expired.
Yeah, and it's a mess.
And the new Act has a piece init that says that they can
extend extant living LAPs, butit's silent on what happens to
the dead LAPs and localauthorities at the moment.

(01:02:12):
There was a letter the otherday from one of the major local
authorities saying we can't dealwith your proposed variation
because we're gearing up towrite our tenure plan, having
just, in 2022, written our sixyear development plan, which
we've got to gear up to writeour tenure development plans.
Dublin City Council, which is areally good local authority,
does loads of work, isunder-resourced, it doesn't have

(01:02:33):
the people, it doesn't have thebodies and then the people are
moving around.
So you might have like thecultural shift.
And I was talking to a plannerthere a few weeks ago who's a
very senior planner at DublinCity Council and he had been in
another Dublin City localauthority for three years and he
said when he left there was noplanner in his department who'd
been there when he joined andthey've all left since because
they're moving around all thetime.

Speaker 1 (01:02:54):
That's a problem in itself.

Speaker 2 (01:02:56):
It's a problem in all forms of work now, but
particularly local authority,where you've got an innate
knowledge of a part of the cityor whatever, and then you lose
it or someone else comes in.
They don't understand it.
I don't know how you thought.

Speaker 1 (01:03:07):
well, resolve it by resources, Give them more
resources, yeah, and by givingthem good working conditions and
allowing them to make positivecontributions.
Like I don't think thatplanners would enjoy the way the
system is set up either, thisadversarial saying no, they're
not going to enjoy that.
That's not why anyone went tostudy planning to say no, right,

(01:03:30):
that's not how it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:32):
Nor is it the Planning Act?
Because the Planning Actactually is.
I always tell at the very firstlecture I give to UCD students.
I get them to work out what isthe name of the Planning Act and
I put in some funny versions ofit.
It's the planning anddevelopment document and it says
an act to provide for housing.
Dot, dot, dot, dot dot.
So it's all full of positiveverbs but there's only three
mentions the 2000 Act.
There's only three mentions ofdevelopers and they're all

(01:03:52):
negative.
And if you look through your920 pages of the current Act,
you won't find the wordviability anywhere in it.
It's just it doesn't appear.

Speaker 1 (01:03:59):
So so that's.
I mean.
Look, that's another podcast initself.
It's a whole other series.
Um, I have down here to ask youabout like what's the most?
I mean I use the wordridiculous, but like what's the,
the planning case that sticksin your mind the most, the most
frustrating or most discouragingplanning case that you it?

Speaker 2 (01:04:16):
just says to me that I was thinking how many, how
many hours have we got?

Speaker 1 (01:04:19):
yeah, well, I, you've got to pick one though right.

Speaker 2 (01:04:21):
Well, I think the treatment of SHD would be is
outstanding to me.
It rankles me because I was.
There was an article written bytwo academics in UCD and I'm on
the staff of UCD technicallyand I helped one of them write
an article because he wanted meto explain the SHD and I spoke
as openly as I'm speaking herenow, but he put that probably
more openly because I thoughtand he went and quoted me in it

(01:04:44):
but didn't say who it was.
It was thinly disguised.
It was me, clearly me, and itmade it look as if we tried to
hoodwink a minister into comingup with this newfangled system,
which wasn't the case, becausethe minister had put out in
writing asking people to makesubmissions, it and that that
sticks in my craw, and also thefact that newspapers were
writing within six months.
Where are all these great shds?

(01:05:06):
we all want to figure out andthe thing I made the point
there's a very good uh planningpractice in the uk called
litchfields and they writereally, really good uh research
pieces and one of them was aboutthey'd done one about how the
translation rate frompermissions to housing and they
do it after five years and theysaid there was a 50% for large
schemes.
It was a 50% translation rateof permissions into large scale

(01:05:28):
housing schemes after five years.
Within less than a year afterSHD came out, certain newspaper
articles were saying where areall these houses?
As if it was Angel Delight witha big thing of water and a
massive wooden spoon andsuddenly all these houses are
going to come out of it.
So that to me is frustrating.
Then I had one recently aroundthe ambassador theatre where we
refused permission to putrailings around the ambassador

(01:05:49):
theatre and it was refused andthat.
So that's because it was aprotected and we're not in the
public realm, but you can'tprotect it.
You can't protect it.
The people who kind of who sleepand do whatever they do beside
billings when they need to goand there's no toilet nearby,
and that I mean that is a smallexample.
So we do everything in theoffice, from big to large
schemes, small schemes, and thatone it just stuck.

(01:06:11):
It was a recent one, stuck inmy craw, and also the other one,
actually I'm looking at thewindow here down at Mount
Crescent and saw a ones whereBrent geese come out, yeah, and
we've had a few of those andthere's one.

Speaker 1 (01:06:22):
actually Were you involved in the one up in St
Anne's.

Speaker 2 (01:06:25):
Yeah, we have been involved with that, and also one
in Kulak where they had donethe developer had done analyses
showing there was no Brent goose.
It did four years of birdsurveys, yeah, and the board
wasn't convinced.
I mean, I love planning, I lovemy job, absolutely love it, but
I find it frustrating and I'malways trying to make it better
as everybody is Like no one's init to make it worse.

Speaker 1 (01:06:45):
Well, some people are in it to make it worse, tom,
okay, okay, but you can draw noother conclusion.
The Planning Act is a missedopportunity for reform, and
there's no other way of lookingat it.
Apart from that, there is acohort of people that do not
want things to change yes, I'm afriend of mine, actually, paul.

Speaker 2 (01:07:05):
He lives in the states I was talking about
recently over christmas and hewas saying about I'd never come
across this concept for theoverton window.
I don't ever come across it,yeah, in political discourse.
Yeah, I just thought it'd be areally good thing to apply to
the irish planning system abouthousing, because it's basically
saying that you take things thatare acceptable, things that are
kind of slightly odd, and thenthings that have to be
unthinkable.

(01:07:26):
And if you were saying, well,if we were to apply the theory
of the planning system and, evenfor a short period, to do
things that might be unthinkable, if we could build houses
really quickly, that wouldn't begood news for planning
consultants because we'd be outof a job.
But Ireland needs houses.
But, these are all solvableproblems.
If Australia can job, butireland needs houses, it's just.
But these are all solvableproblems.
If australia can do it with a20 million population, why can't

(01:07:46):
we do it?
And I want to get somethingelse that I probably okay.
One of the questions you do askwhat really frustrates as well,
my planie.
The one thing that really getson my goat in 2012, the
government announced this andyou think about it is how many
of the world's leading techcompanies are in our end?
Yeah, okay, and we have asystem with 31 planning

(01:08:09):
authorities that until recently,they had four different
computer systems.
Yeah, so the 31 localauthorities couldn't talk to
each other and they couldn'ttalk to import panola because
their computer system wasn'tlinked.
Yeah, and my planie was raisedby the minister in 2012, april
2012, and she said at the timethat this is a very simple

(01:08:29):
concept where you'd have awebsite that would show all the
development plans stuck togetherphysically on a map.
Now if you look at it today,most of the country is blank and
it says awaiting data becausethe local authorities haven't
given the documents.
So Dublin City Council is on itand a lot of the Dublin's are

(01:08:50):
on it, but most of the countryit's blank.
And if you look and you clickon it and say why can't I find
out what that field is ownedwithout having to look at the
Leit is awaiting data, like howlong do you wait?
It's not hard to do.
Another one, actually a funnyone in local authority about two
years ago, was actually quite afunny story.
A planner was on a Zoom call andthe planner started giving out
to me and said well, tom, itwould, and there's about six or

(01:09:11):
seven people, including theclient, on the call.
I said well, tom, what wouldhave helped if you sent in the
drawings at the correct scale?
And and she said yes, but I'mworking from home.
And I said what's your point?
He said I'm working off acomputer.
I said but the drawings arephysically in your office at the
correct scale.
And I had to explain to herthat the fact you're looking at
a computer it's like father tedseries, like near and far away.

(01:09:33):
I said, the fact you're lookingoff your computer doesn't mean
that the physical drawings inyour office, should you decide
to go in there, are at thecorrect scale you probably don't
get get that Father Tedreference, do you, did you?

Speaker 1 (01:09:43):
It was a weird thing in Canada you didn't really have
Catholic priests.

Speaker 2 (01:09:48):
So you were from Canada because just as well,
they said how good Canadianplanners were.
She's a critical skill, no ageneral.

Speaker 1 (01:09:55):
Are you a general skill?

Speaker 2 (01:09:56):
So it took.
You see, we got a planner inthere, canadian planners in
through the general list, but ittook six months and a lot of
hoo-ha you had to move toportugal.
I had to leave the country inthe middle of covid and it took
about five months for mine aswell.

Speaker 1 (01:10:13):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, she was complaining about it, but
she was in lisbon beachsideapartment okay, well, you know
her, her team's thing was set toaway a lot of the time.
Yeah, we're dead right.
So I think she was having apretty good time still getting
paid.
Oh no, you weren't getting paidactually, because we couldn't
employ you.
Yeah, no, okay.
So I feel I feel a little bitmore sorry for you now.

(01:10:35):
All right, um, tom, I've usedup way too much of your time
here, um, but I have otherthings.
Magic wand, what's your?

Speaker 2 (01:10:42):
might well that one was the one I said the my planie
that we actually here's, that'syour magic.
No, no, no.
It sounds like such a simplething we don't have, I'm sorry,
with a wish, isn't it kind ofwish, it's?

Speaker 1 (01:10:51):
a wish?
Yeah, I wish.
Well, it's not a wish, it'slike.
You can do it.
You have the power.

Speaker 2 (01:10:55):
We have a power.
Okay, my power is I'm going to.
Well, honestly, I'd actuallylove to administer for housing,
okay that's the first person whosaid that, actually
interestingly.
This is going to be thrown backat me because I believe that
Dara O'Brien has the first name,but actually you could be made
a senator.
The Constitution allows twopeople to be made a senator and
then you can be the minister.
And that would probably drivehalf of the anti-development

(01:11:16):
world mad if I became minister,but I would actually, in an
ideal world, I'd love toadminister housing because I'd
have cranes on the skylinewithin weeks.
Are we building houses?
Because we need to build houses.
So it's to, it's to put inplace some form of mechanism to
allow houses to be built and getpermission in a much more and
much more collegiate way, thatthe local authorities are not

(01:11:36):
adversarial, that they'reworking with developers to make
it happen.
But my very simple task would beall these high-tech companies
in Ireland and yet there's nomap.
You can click it on and saythis is all zoned map land in
Ireland and this is the layer ofall the service land and these
are all the layers of the busroutes and the train routes, et

(01:11:57):
cetera.
So it's have myplanie doctoredand I wouldn't say it'd take
more than a week to get that upand running.
And such a simple thing.
And stop saying awaiting data.
I tell you what.
Pick up the phone, ring the guyin Leitrim and say send me on
that.

Speaker 1 (01:12:11):
GIS.
Yeah, just give it to me.

Speaker 2 (01:12:13):
I need it one week.
And then the minister bringsthem all in, all the 31 chief
executives, and said why haven'tyou done it?
Well, dublin City Council'sdone it, another place has done
it.
Why haven't you done it?
And if there's some impedimentand I'm the minister there's an
impediment called Joe or Jane inmy department who's stopping
from doing it.
I want them in my office afterlunch and I want to know what
they're going to do.

Speaker 1 (01:12:33):
That's a simple task.

Speaker 2 (01:12:35):
So you kind of have a two there because you're like
you want to be.
That was just a joke, I know,and leave the minister out
because I've never put myselfforward.
Because the headline is goingto be Tom.

Speaker 1 (01:12:46):
Phillips, back up by the army?

Speaker 2 (01:12:47):
No, no, it's not no it's not Because, I mean, these
people put themselves forward.
God knows why.
It's masochistic to bedemocratically elected, so it
has to be democratic.
But I think in times of crisis,you need to do certain things,
and that could be the over towindow where you do something
that's technically unthinkable.
We did it, covid.

Speaker 1 (01:13:04):
We did it.
We turned around and we're likeyep, emergency, we're doing
this, you don't like it?

Speaker 2 (01:13:09):
I'd like the headline to be the master or the
myplanie.

Speaker 1 (01:13:13):
I think that's just a simple solution.
Book recommendation.

Speaker 2 (01:13:17):
Yeah, simple one.
It's a book by a guy calledSimon Sinek S-I-N-E-K.
And I came across him on TEDTalks years ago.
Oh okay, it's a book calledStart With why, and he started
off.
He says that in any goodcompany should not start saying
how they do things or why theydo or what they do, but should
say why they do it.
And every time I write, when Ido my all my lectures, I always
start off.

(01:13:37):
I write everything in threesand I say why I'm, why I'm
giving that lecture, how I'mgoing to tell them about it and
what I need them to know.
And when I write reports, I dothe same thing.
Just simple thing.
It's the golden circle of why,how and what, in that order.

Speaker 1 (01:13:52):
And that's what Apple do.

Speaker 2 (01:13:53):
What other places do, and I use the analogy of the in
that thing, about theinvalidation, about the um,
about the.
You know why you'd want towrite a book about invalidation
as opposed to saying there's15.5% of all planning
applications are invalidated,blah, blah, blah, blah blah.
So the first reason to set upwhy you do it, why you'd write
the thing, is to highlightsomething that can be solved,

(01:14:14):
that can be fixed, to make itperfect from the start, as
opposed to have inherent flawsin the system.
And there's so many things inplanning that we could do that.
We could do that, we could makeit proper from the start, and
then it would work accordingly.

Speaker 1 (01:14:28):
What was the quote that you had Design it from the?

Speaker 2 (01:14:31):
It was a great thing in Simon's book About.
A Japanese automotive engineerWas sent to Went to America to
see how an automated line workedIn terms of the factory in an
American car plant and he waslooking at it and then at the
very end of the production line,this guy came out with a rubber
mallet and started tapping thedoors and standing back a bit

(01:14:52):
like a snooker player andlooking at the car, checking the
line along the side of the car,then tapping it with this
rubber mallet.
And the Americans were veryproud of this and they turned to
the Japanese guy and said whatdo you think?
And he said what's that mandoing?
And they said he's just makingsure it's perfect.
And the Japanese guy said well,why doesn't he make it perfect?
Why don't you design the car tobe perfect from the start?
Why do you need somebody with arubber mallet to come along and

(01:15:13):
fix it?
And I use that analogy to getacross the point about the
planning system.
Why don?
Why don't you?
If you know something's wrong,if you know invalidation is part
of the system, why do youaccept it?
Why don't you have zerotolerance for validation and put
in place a simple thing thatyou can't lodge an application
unless you've had it validatedby the local authority.
And then you could even putthings like put a barcode on a

(01:15:34):
site notice that someone couldcould look it up and they could
see what the scheme was, orwhatever it is.
If that makes the publiccomplain more, so be it, but at
least you've got the systemthere that people know will work
and that if a site notice is upon the site it means there is a
valid application behind it soI think I could sum up it by
saying design it better yeah,design it better.
Like it's a.

(01:15:55):
It's a planning and developmentact and we need we have a
housing crisis, one of thethings we can't.
Even the state brought broughtout back in 2024, four different
documents, including theHousing Commission, which is
just, it's a actually.

(01:16:15):
That's another thing.
I'm going to say to you a quickof the 83 recommendations, and
it said that of the 83, 65 wereeither implemented underway or
partially underway.
And if you think about it, Iwas just thinking the other day
about an analogy Supposing yourwife went out and said you know

(01:16:36):
that the fridge door is loose?
Yeah, and you go, yeah, and shegoes off, and she comes back a
few hours later and says whathave you done?
And you said, well, it's eitherin terms of fixing it, it's
either implemented, it'sunderway, or it's partially
underway.
And she goes, knowing me, she'dsay it was partially underway.
So what have you done?
I said, well, I went down toWoody's and I bought a
screwdriver, yeah, so thereforeit's partially underway.
So forget about it.

(01:17:00):
Now look of the 83, really, howmany of them actually have you
actually are done?
Yeah, well, like, what doespartially underway mean?
Like it's great, isn't it?
I must do that in future, likeif you tend to a kid that goes
into school and hasn't done thehomework, and the kid said and
the teacher says well, have youdone it?
Well, it have my pens and mypaper here.

Speaker 1 (01:17:21):
So anyway, we could keep on for hours.
Yeah, we could.
Tom Phillips, thanks so muchfor coming in.
I can't believe.
I mean, I feel like we've beenhere for 10 minutes, but we've
been here for an hour and a halfand there's a lot of stuff on
the list that I think maybe wemight get you to come back after
the Planning Act has beencommenced, when I'm Minister for
Housing.

(01:17:41):
Is it when you're Minister?

Speaker 2 (01:17:42):
for Housing.
Is it when you're Minister forHousing?
Well now, you've agreed to theinterview now, once you're
appointed Minister.

Speaker 1 (01:17:48):
Thanks so much for coming in and for all that.
There's a lot in there and Ithink that for people who aren't
in the industry, who areinterested in planning, there's
a lot of information actuallythat you guys have published
which is written in very cleareyed uh manner and I think lay
people could understand it.
Um.

(01:18:08):
So, thank you for doing that,for your contribution to the
industry, Um, and I, uh, Ireally, really appreciate it.
I've learned things today.
I can't say I feel that muchmore hopeful unless your coup
comes off.
Then I feel very hopeful.
So thanks a lot for coming in,Thank you.
Thank you, Deidre.
The build is produced by CarrieFernandez and me, Rick Larkin.

(01:18:32):
Music is by Cass.

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