Dublin Airport New Runway/Infrastructure.

At this stage the DAA could offer to pay the over costs of the NCC & end world hunger & FCC would still find reason to deny it. There really needs to be a discussion at government level about how much sway a local authority can really have on such a vital piece of national infrastructure.

Another Fingal V DAA disagreement:

https://www.independent.ie/business/irish/permission-refused-for-large-staff-car-park-at-dublin-airport/a280892418.html

At this stage it looks like FCC are guaranteed to oppose everythng from DAA.

??????

There should be an arbitrary cut off point where any project with a budget over €100mn (or €200mn, or some other very large figure) the approval request goes to and comes straight from a cabinet minister in charge of national level infrastructure/development projects.

Having to waste years going through county councils and ABP where some local NIMBY crank or overly fastidious junior bureaucrat can delay or cancel a project that would benefit the entire country is an absolutely bonkers system that everyone can see just isn't working.

Most obviously/relevantly here in the problems with DUB's completely ridiculous capacity limits and delays to efforts to improve infrastructure.

It's tempting to believe that a Minister such as you describe would simply say yes, but that would depend on a whole range of factors, including his/her political complexion and possibly including things like short-term political calculations rather than the longer-term view. Currently there is no role for politicians at any level in planning decisions. Over the years, Irish public administration has moved in the direction of having expert bodies with the right expertise to perform regulatory roles. Politicians' role is meant to be one of putting in place the policy and legislation and ideally that it how it should stay.

I don't know a whole lot about planning but things like local area development plans, stated Government policy/guidance and of course a raft of EU directives have to be taken into account. I am not defending FCC or ABP and I have to confess that I have not read the 753-page Planning and Development Bill 2023, which has been passed by the Dail and also by the Seanad, but has to return to the Dail for final consideration as the Seanad made amendments. However my understanding is that it will, amongst other things, reduce the potential for objections to planning applications. On the other hand, a scan of the list of the section headings in the Bill suggests that there is a huge range of facets to planning, so how much difference it will ultimately make I don't know.

In practice an issue like that would be brought to Government, and Ireland is going to have coalitions from now on. You can see where this might go….

True. Thanks for the reminder. 😐️

I would agree with a lot of what you say here. A 'minister for infrastructure' sounds great on paper but the reality is it would take about 10 years to build it into a proper department. The main stumbling block is that you have to take away powers from other departments and also the so-called minister for infrastructure would interact in so many other areas that it would almost be impossible. For instance we already have a department for transport and a national transport authority for Dublin and Transport Infrastructure Ireland, then we have all of the local authorities with their own interests. IMO TII should be the body that brings all of these together, not a Minister.

It will end up the same as our current Housing Minister where it looks good on paper and there is a designated responsible person (scapegoat) however it is the Local Authorities that deliver housing so he is pretty much irrelevant, but it looks like action is being taken.

We already have a structure in place for delivering infrastructure and nobody has suggested this could be improved by having a minister in place. There are so many other ways to speed things up, I really don't understand what a minister will do.

That's exactly my point. The Taoiseach has proposed/mooted it. He recognises that it's a huge issue and appointing a minister to it gives the impression that something is being done and it's being taken seriously. Same thing happened with the minister for housing…and we all see how effective that is!

The Shannon stopover was a matter of Government policy so a formula to phase it out was ultimately agreed at political level, despite the protestations of the Shannon lobby, which in ways continue to this day. It was also linked to the air agreements with the US and Canada so these had to be revised. As has been rehearsed repeatedly in this thread, the Dublin cap is a planning condition and, short of the establishment of a dictatorship, and frustrating as it is, can only be changed through the planning process. I have not seen a realistic alternative proposed here or elsewhere.

That's all fine for the future, as long as the planning legislation is amended to provide for such a system. In the meantime, the cap remains, unless it is undone or amended under the current planning laws. Whatever happens, no overnight solution appears likely. That's the context for my "dictatorship" reference.