Editorial: Elusive reforms at Planning Authority

The prime minister’s mantra for the past two years has been to promote continuity. He has now adopted a new mantra: stability and sustainability.

It does not take an expert in political linguistics to conclude that these terms essentially mean the same thing: more of the same of the government’s economic strategies.

This is not good news for those hoping for radical reform in the property development and construction industries that have done so much harm to the country’s environment and urban fabric over the last few decades.

In its 2023 Budget proposals, the Chamber of Commerce has made some valid suggestions about how the government could switch off the autopilot steering of policies in property development and take some positive action to reform the Planning Authority.

One of these suggestions relates to the introduction of a points system run by the PA that would require development applications to be assessed on several environmentally-friendly criteria and be awarded points accordingly. Only those applications that obtained a minimum pass mark would be processed further.

The chamber argues that the PA should “steer away from the piecemeal speculative market of pencil...