Full coverage: Planning

Ronan Group Real Estate has been locked in a two-year battle with DCC to try and uncover its thinking about development heights and densities in key parts of Dublin.

Special Development Zones were designated to deliver tens of thousands of homes, and have largely failed. Now fast-track Strategic Housing Developments, too, are under threat from the increasing use of the courts by objectors, warns urban planner Tom Phillips.

An Taisce’s challenge to Glanbia’s cheese factory raises many questions: Is litigation against individual projects the new policy battleground? How much of a facility’s supply chain should be scrutinised in the planning process? Experts offer varied answers.

A high-stakes row over the future of the North Lotts and Grand Canal Dock Strategic Development Zone planning scheme now looks set to go to court.

Uncertainty over planning permission is a fact of life in our system, and it causes problems. In Europe, they do it differently.

Ireland’s cities are burdened by a persistent shortage of space of all kinds, especially residential. Plus, given the country’s need to go carbon-neutral over the coming decades, Ireland can - and should - go tall.

While it’s a necessary part of business planning, forecasting has become abnormally challenging of late as we are at the mercy of consumer confidence. And that is becoming increasingly more volatile.

Sustainable building materials, carbon-neutral homes and quality housing represent one sector where Ireland could set the global pace for the implementation of new technologies. All we need is a designated experimental town.