Latest news with #SeanODriscoll
Irish Times
3 days ago
- Business
- Irish Times
Will rent reform hitting holiday lets irk Coalition's own Ministers?
Last month, the secretary general at the Department of Environment, Climate and Energy stepped in at the last minute for her Minister, Darragh O'Brien, at a clean energy event. She told the event that data centres were eating up all of our energy supply. With this one throwaway comment, Oonagh Buckley attracted more headlines and political attention than most senior civil servants would be comfortable with. 'We're having to even think about prioritising what is the social need of the demand – is it housing or is it AI?' she asked. 'We're going to have to think much more about managing demand.' READ MORE As existential questions about our infrastructure continue to plague the Government, Jack Horgan-Jones is reporting in our lead story today that data centres would be able to use 'private wires' to power themselves independently from the ESB power grid. Big energy users would be able to build and operate electricity infrastructure, including between power sources and data centres, under a policy that will be published next month. It comes after Sean O'Driscoll, head of the ESRI and a member of the Government's new infrastructure tax force, warned on Tuesday that Ireland cannot expect to attract companies 'like Apple, Microsoft, Google into Ireland and say to them: 'we'd like some of your jobs, but we're not going to provide you with data centres.' We can provide them with data centres if we invest in our infrastructure,' he said. On the subject of infrastructure, Michael McDowell also has an interesting column today on how to reform our planning system and neuter the constant issue of judicial reviews being taken against planning decisions. RPZs The Government promised us that it wasn't afraid to take unpopular decisions on housing. It probably didn't anticipate them being unpopular with their own ministers, though. We are reporting this morning that thousands of short-term holiday lettings on the west coast and elsewhere will require planning permission as a result of emergency laws extending Rent Pressure Zones (RPZs) nationwide by the end of this week. Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture and, more importantly, Kerry TD, Michael Healy-Rae tells The Irish Times that he is 'extremely concerned' about the impact this policy would have on his constituency. In advance of the law changing, Killarney is the only part of Kerry currently covered by RPZs. This means that the entire Kerry coastline from Listowel down to Kenmare is dotted with Airbnb style lettings, which may be crucial to rural tourism, which will all now be forced to apply for planning permission. Asked if he wished to comment, Mr Healy-Rae did in his own inimitable style: 'Isn't it a major concern of mine?' This issue likely won't escape the notice of senior Government ministers hailing from some of Ireland's most bucolic constituencies, including Kerrywoman Norma Foley, who are almost certain to face ferocious representations from unhappy Airbnb hosts on this issue. Trouble could also be brewing between two ministerial James' on the impact RPZ reforms will have on students. At a press conference yesterday, Minister for Housing James Browne told reporters that there will be no special exemption for students under new RPZ legislation. This was despite an appeal for such an exemption coming from Minster for Further and Higher Education James Lawless. The pair had been due to meet yesterday, but that has been deferred to next week. Immigration Elsewhere in the paper, Conor Gallagher and Martin Wall are reporting on the decision agreed at Cabinet yesterday to buy the Citywest Hote l and make it a permanent processing centre for International Protection Applicants. As the annual bill for using private providers to accommodate people who come to Ireland seeking asylum has breached €1 billion a year, Minister for Justice Jim O'Callaghan is under pressure to find ways to provider 14,000 State-owned beds for asylum seekers by 2028. Buying Citywest will cost the State €148.2 million, but Mr O'Callaghan has predicted that the Government 'will have got our money back in terms of the investment' after four years. The company that runs the hotel received more than €18 million between January and March of this year, for accommodating both international protection applicants and Ukrainian refugees. And finally, Joe Brennan is reporting in Business on the Government moving yesterday to lift the State's remaining €500,000 executive pay cap at bailed-out banks after selling its remaining shares in AIB. Best Reads With the inauspicious image of a fox who drowned in the fountain outside Government buildings yesterday, Miriam Lord writes about the Groundhog Day style stagnant exchanges between Opposition and Government on the perma-crisis of housing While writing about the Irish presidency, the job that nobody seems to want, Kathy Sheridan offers up a rollicking read on the delirious days of the 2011 election. And Sally Hayden is reporting from Beirut on the 'sense of panic and deepening fears of a wider conflict' in the Middle East, with aerial attacks and missiles being fired between Israel and Iran Playbook The Dáil schedule today is being dominated by emergency legislation to extend RPZs to the entire country. After a housing rally outside Leinster House last night, Labour published its own emergency amendments to the legislation which it says would introduce a two year rent freeze and fine landlords up to €100,000 for breaking the law. The Dáil schedule looks like this: 09.00 Topical Issues 10.00 Private Members' Business is a Motion from the Independent and Parties Technical Group on public transport experiences 12.00 Leaders' Questions 12.34 Other Members' Questions 12.42 Questions on policy or legislation 13.12 Motions without debate, which is Finance (Local Property Tax and Other Provisions) (Amendment) Bill 2025 – Financial Resolution. 14.13 Government business, which is devoted to getting through second stage, committee stage and remaining stages of the Residential Tenancies (Amendment) Bill 2025, the new RPZ reforms 19.47 Government business then moves to committee stage of the Mental Health Bill 2024 22.17 Deferred division on the: Criminal Law (Prohibition of the Disclosure of Counselling Records) Bill 2025, Ruth Coppinger's bill to ban the use of counselling notes in rape trials The Seanad schedule looks like this: 10.30 Commencement matters 11.30 Order of Business 14.00 Government business, first slot of which is for Statements on Food Promotion and New Markets 15.30 Followed by another Government business slot, for Statements on the Farrelly Commission Report 17.00 Private Members' Business, which is a motion on enterprise matters and business supports for SME's It's a busy day for Committees, with all of the following taking place on the Leinster House campus today: the HSE are appearing before the disability matters committee, Hiqa and the minister for older people are appearing before the health committee to answer questions on nursing homes, the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign will be talking to politicians about the Israeli Bond Programme and the Committee on Social Protection will hear from the ESRI, which is proposing a new Child Benefit tier to challenge child poverty. This comes after the Taoiseach signalled this week that such a measure is on the table for Budget 2026. You can read the full committee schedule here .
Irish Times
3 days ago
- Business
- Irish Times
There is a way to unblock Ireland's infrastructural logjam
Listening to Sean O'Driscoll, chairman of the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), and member of the Government's infrastructure taskforce, interviewed recently raised my hopes for a dawning realisation at Government level of the infrastructural crisis we face. Our administrative and legal procedures simply cannot overcome or unlock the logjam in time to prevent very serious damage to the Irish economy and Irish society. O'Driscoll, a very experienced private sector chief executive, spoke plainly and truthfully about a number of issues including capital spending cutbacks. He observed that the Irish planning process had developed from a two-tier system involving local planning authorities and an appeal board process, to a three-tier one encompassing a veritable legal industry grounded on judicial review . I would go much farther than O'Driscoll in predicting the crisis for economic infrastructure. The recently enacted Planning and Development Act redesignating An Bord Pleanála as An Comisiún Pleanala – the largest-by-volume enactment ever made by the Oireachtas – will compound rather than mitigate our disastrous planning process and Government's dismal record. The new commission is to be chaired by Paul Reid, formerly head of Fingal County Council and of the Health Service Executive. Frankly, it really doesn't matter who stands on the bridge of the new planning commission that increasingly resembles a governmental RMS Titanic. The commission, as I have written here , is to be a single competent agency to decide on appeal matters as trivial as whether a bin shelter can be constructed in a front garden or the height of an extension to a family home. At the same time it could rule on decisions as far reaching as whether Metrolink should be built; whether offshore wind farms should be permitted in the Atlantic; all major State and local authority compulsory purchase orders; the number of flights to be allowed into Dublin Airport; whether a Shannon-Dublin water supply project or new Cork-Limerick motorway should be allowed to proceed. READ MORE What is it about Ireland that all of these massively different functions are vested in a single non-governmental agency? How is it hoped that such a vast range of powers and functions can be exercised by a single body entirely free from the curse of lengthy judicial review proceedings? There is another way. Challenges to legislation enacted by the Oireachtas, as distinct from decisions made by non-governmental agencies including the planning commission, are far less likely to be brought or to succeed. The Victorian model of having the legislature authorise major infrastructural development by statute is the answer – subject to modification to take account of EU legal requirements. When the fledgling Irish Free State determined to harness the Shannon's hydroelectric potential, it enacted, even before the establishment of the ESB, a law in 1925 providing for the construction at Ardnacrusha. This law also provided for the canals involved, the compulsory purchase of land and legal interests affected, and State financing of what was then a massive piece of national infrastructure. [ Ardnacrusha at 100: What could happen if Ireland showed similar ambition today and invested 20% of national budget in energy? Opens in new window ] For 30 years, the construction of a Shannon-Dublin water supply scheme has been acknowledged as necessary at Government level. But nothing has happened. Uisce Éireann believes the project might take 10 more years for completion, even if it was given the Government's green light today. Why not, instead, pass a 'Shannon-Dublin Water Supply Scheme Act'? It would have the following features: the promoter, Uisce Éireann, would submit detailed plans, including compulsory acquisition of wayleaves and other land. It would set out environmental impact assessments required by European law. Receipt and consideration of any third-party submissions would be completed by a select committee of the Oireachtas and the committee would authorise the works, as varied or approved, to be completed. Subsequent challenge to the construction of the project would face the hurdle of proving the unconstitutionality of the measure. Judicial review would simply not arise. The government of the day could kick-start and see through to completion major infrastructural projects if this model, like Victorian legislative infrastructural projects, were adopted. The same could apply to the national power grid, major sewage disposal facilities and major rail projects. The legislative option incorporating such approval could even address passenger numbers at Dublin Airport . Only a handful of Senators opposed central features of the Planning and Development Act, which has created monstrous new planning legal processes centred on the new planning commission, along with national development policies and guidelines, and the wholly unnecessary Office of the Planning Regulator . Far from being an answer to the coming crisis identified by O'Driscoll, the 2024 Act is a charter for its continuation. It is a recipe for ongoing failure, even with its legally flimsy restriction on future judicial reviews. If the Government's infrastructural taskforce doesn't understand this, it too will fail.
Irish Times
3 days ago
- Business
- Irish Times
Planning objections have become a legal industry, official claims
The legal profession has turned planning objections into an 'industry' as people 'run down to the Four Courts' to block new projects, a member of the Government's infrastructure taskforce has said. Sean O'Driscoll, chairman of the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), said that in a democratic society, 'common good must always prevail over individual rights'. 'A very small number of people make a lot of noise, run down to the Four Courts to get a judicial review. And [they] are supported by the legal system, who are prepared to take their cases on a 'no fault with no fee' basis,' Mr O'Driscoll said. 'I think that that is wrong.' READ MORE Mr O'Driscoll is one of 12 people appointed to a new infrastructure taskforce attempting to unblock barriers to important economic projects. Announced in May by Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers , it forms part of a Government strategy to speed up delivery of schemes such as housing . Speaking on RTÉ Radio 1's Today with Claire Byrne show, Mr O'Driscoll said the bar for getting a judicial review against planning decisions was too low. Such judicial reviews give the public the opportunity to challenge planning decisions. 'Judicial reviews were put in place for a very good reason, but they were not put in place for what they are now being used for,' he said. Mr O'Driscoll also warned that Ireland would not be able to continue to attract international investment if it did not invest in data centres . 'You cannot attract companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google into Ireland and say to them, we'd like some of your jobs, but we're not going to provide you with data centres. We can provide them with data centres if we invest in our infrastructure,' he said. He dismissed a target of generating 5GW of offshore wind capacity by 2030, which had been backed by the Green Party . 'It is a myth, it won't happen, it isn't happening,' he said. 'A lot of those investors have left town, and they've decided Ireland is too difficult a place to do business in from a planning perspective.'
BBC News
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
🎧 John 'Willo' Willams hangs up his mic after 23 years
The latest episode of Cherries: Unpicked is dedicated to commentator, John Williams (aka Willo), who retires this weekend after 23 years in the press box for BBC Radio Clark and Willo chat in the dressing room at Vitality Stadium with special guests including Eddie Howe, Harry Redknapp and Sean O' to the full episode on BBC Sounds
