138 / 298
GAZETTE
JULY-AUGUST 1981
should be included. If not included the Regulations could
be a charter for the unnecessary legal proceedings,
unnecessary waste of time of senior professional and
administrative staff in the Public Authorities and a
charter for the whole industry to cater for the protestors
and the third party objectors. She suggested that the
Regulations were far t oo complex and would present
major difficulties to the controllers and the controlled. The
Construction Industry Federation believe that there
should be a simple set of Regulations to deal with
domestic buildings, and that more complex buildings
should be dealt with by broadly expressed functional re-
gulations and the use of supporting approved contract
documents. The C IF had always felt that the philosophy
of self regulation as a means of regulating an industry is
the right way and the best wa y. Legislation is not always
the panacea it may seem and is not always a solution to
the problem. C I F felt that they had achieved much by self
regulation — the National Hou se Building Guarantee
Scheme, and the Standard Fo rm of Contract among
others. They have no doubt that more had been achieved
in three years than could have been achieved by a State
Ag e n c y.
Planning Permission and the Economic Environment
In his paper on Planning Permission and the Economic
Environment Mr. Sean McKo n e, the Hon. Secretary of
the Construction Industry Federation drew attention to
the fact that a study in 1 9 76 of the decisions reached on
planning applications made to Dublin County Council
during the previous year showed that in 7 5%- 8 0% of the
cases permissions were granted. However about half the
applications were for extensions to dwellings and for
changes of use and for the erection of advertising signs
and other relatively small projects. In a more detailed
analysis of the Dublin County decisions the surprising
result emerged that one-third of all group residential pro-
jects — housing estates and flats — were refused
permission and nearly half the applications for factories,
offices, shops, pubs, garages and warehouses were re-
fused permission. The annual reports of An Bord
Pleanala indicated that nearly half the appeals lodged
with them came from the Eastern Planning region
(Dublin, Kildare, Meath and Wicklow). If the Dublin
County Council figures are representative of the Eastern
planning region and perhaps the whole country it would
be found that nearly half the important work for the
Construction Industry, work generating large employ-
ment and the use of vast quantities of Irish made
materials was either refused permission at local level or
was the subject of a third party appeal. He believed that
the situation if anything had got worse since 1 9 75 and
that it was an intolerable burden on the Construction In-
dustry. A survey of Architects in 1 9 76 indicated that
costs were inflated by about 5% as a result of the plan-
ning control procedures.
H e suggested that there were a number of changes that
could be made immediately to the planning process
without the necessity of having amending legislation. The
most dramatic change would be if An Bord Pleanala
worked to a time limit and Section 2 0 (1) of the 1 9 76 Act
gave the Minister for the Environment power to make a
regulation requiring them so to do. He believed that
recent Court decisions would necessitate changes in the
planning regulations and this would be an ideal
opportunity to make this most important change. He be-
lieved that the length of time that the Board should take
should be a maximum of six months from the date of the
decision of the Planning Authority though this time could
be extended by agreement with the applicant or by
permission of the Minister.
Dealing with the question of planning appeals generally
he said that there was no doubt that the right of third
parties to object is overbalanced in their favour. It is quite
clear that the total elimination of third parties rights to
object would not be acceptable to the Oireachtas — re-
flecting the public opinion. Third party rights would be
adequately protected if such objections were allowed only
at one stage of the planning process. What would suffice
would be to elevate the status of the outline planning
permission by the submission of essential data such as
use, height, point of access, distances from crucial
boundaries. Third parties would have the right to object
at this stage. On ce outline permission had been granted
by the Planning Authority or granted on appeal by An
Bord Pleanala the more detailed planning could only be
the subject of an appeal by one of the parties to the
application. Once the planning use of the site had been
approved then the detailed submission or detailed changes
could not be the subject of a merry-go-round at an
immense cost to the developer and immense loss of jobs
to the Construction Industry.
Price Control System on Houses
In a paper on the present Price Control System on
Houses, Michael Greene a Director of the Construction
Industry Federation in a historical review of the C RV
system stated that very soon after its introduction it
became evident that there were certain problems with the
CRV system which the Industry found difficult if not
impossible in some cases to c o pe with. There was secrecy
on the part of the Department in its discussions with
applicants for certificates and there were the delays in
dealing with applicants. There was no mechanism for an
appeal against refusal to issue a certificate. If a builder was
refused a certificate no reasons were given for that re-
fusal. The system did not take account of s ome of the
fundamentals of a market e c o n omy such as taking into
consideration a company's previous experience. How
then had industry responded to the situation? To a degree
the response was to build non-grant aided houses. It is
clear from statistics that there was from the mid- 1 9 7 0s a
clear shift in the structure of the private housing market
away from smaller houses towards bigger houses, and one
of the contributing factors was the unwillingness of the
industry to continue to operate a CRV system which they
felt was inequitable.
In looking to the future he commented that the CRV
system was introduced into a different world from that
which exists today. The builder who is building for the
first time buyer can no longer operate on the principle of
"I will charge whatever I can get" but rather must
operate on the principle of "What can I build which will
enable me to sell to the first time buyer given the
limitations on his ability to repay his loan and raise a
deposit?" It was necessary to encourage builders into the
first-time buyer market. The CRV system acts in the
reverse. The private sector was in his view the most
138