To the Chairman and Members, General Purposes Committee.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
The City Council at its meeting on the 6th January, 1936, adopted a resolution to prepare a planning scheme for the whole municipal area. Section 29 of the Town and Regional Planning Act, 1984, prescribes that where a planning authority has decided under this Act to make a planning scheme, such authority shall, "with all convenient speed," give effect to such decision and make a planning scheme in accordance therewith and shall submit such scheme to the Minister for his approval. The making and submission of a planning scheme under this Section of the Act is a reserved function of the City Council. The services of three Consultants, Professor Abererombie, F.R.I.B.A., Messrs. S. A. Kelly, F.S.I., and Manning Robertson, M.R.I.A.I., were engaged to prepare the plan. These experts, with the co-operation of the appropriate Corporation officials and after various conferences with the Town Planning Committee, have now completed the first stage of their labours and their sketch development plan together with a copy of their report explaining their proposals is herewith submitted for the consideration of the General Purposes Committee.

In their sketch development plan, the Consultants have included in broad outline all their proposals for the replanning and future development of Dublin. When this plan has been considered by the General Purposes Committee, the Consultants will then embody the proposals that have been approved of in detailed form in a draft planning scheme which on ratification by the Council will be submitted to the Minister for Local Government and Public Health.

A sketch development plan such as this, the Consultants point out, would fail in its purpose if it did not include proposals for the future which may to some appear visionary. The Town Planning Committee agrees with the Consultants as to the desirability of these proposals. At the same time it fully realises the fact that the carrying out of these proposals is dependent on the necessary money being available, and that we must "cut our cloth according to our measure." While endorsing in most cases the recommendations of the Consultants, the Town Planning Committee is aware that the heavy expenditure on buildings and compensation involved in some of the proposals, is an obstacle to their being undertaken for years to come. It is, therefore, suggested that the General Purposes Committee should first consider the various proposals in principle, merely. From the proposals that meet with the approval, a selection can be made by the Town Planning Commitee, guided by the views of your Committee, of a restricted number of proposals for which, it is hoped, the necessary money will be forthcoming in the near future, and these proposals will be embodied in detail in the draft planning scheme for submission to the Minister. This does not mean that the other proposals will be permanently abandoned. They will, so to speak, be kept in reserve. In the working out of our planning policy there will, therefore, be in effect two schemes first, the statutory planning scheme as approved of by the Minister, which will keep the expenditure in the near future within our resources, and a supplemental scheme consisting of other proposals eminently desirable in themselves, but which considerations of economy prevent us from including in the draft scheme. This supplemental plan will have no statutory effect but will serve a useful purpose in guiding the Corporation as to the policy to be adopted in dealing with future proposals submitted by private parties which will not be covered by the provisions of the statutory planning scheme.

Further, in the supplemental scheme would be included, for example, the proposals suggested by the Consultants which would have to be carried out by outside authorities, namely, the suggested sites of public buildings to be erected by the Government and the site proposed for the new Catholic cathedral. We have no power under the planning scheme to compel outside Authorities to place their buildings on sites selected by us. We may suggest where they should go and these suggestions are embodied in the sketch development plan, but these proposals cannot form part of the draft planning scheme unless with the consent of the authorities concerned. The adoption of these suggestions by the General Purposes Committee will enable the Town Planning Committee to take up with these authorities the proposals put forward for the siting of such buildings.

It should be noted that the Consultants in preparing the sketch development plan did not confine themselves to the existing municipal boundary. As they state in their report, they considered the surrounding County of Dublin "as an integral part of the area which the capital should occupy in order that its dignity should be realised." They furthermore suggest that a limit should be fixed to the extension of the City in the surrounding country and in the section of the report dealing with regional development they suggest that provision be made for an agricultural reservation or a "green belt," which would still keep the countryside within reasonable reach of the city centre. This does not mean that there should be no development in the agricultural reservation, but that such development should be concentrated in a number of small satellite towns. This, of course, is provision for the future, and it is not anticipated that there will be any development of satellite towns except around existing centres of population, but the planning policy should be directed to this end and proposed development in the meantime controlled accordingly.

These proposals for the extra-municipal area will not be included in the draft scheme which is confined to the area of the County Borough, but with the approval of your Committee, they can be submitted to the County Planning Authority. The Town Planning Act, 1934, makes the Corporation the planning authority for the Dublin planning region which includes the whole of Dublin County with the adjoining counties of Meath, Kildare and Wicklow. Before the Corporation can assume regional planning powers, it must first pass a resolution to prepare a plan for the whole or any part of its region. The Town Planning Committee has considered from time to time the advisability of recommending the City Council to pass a planning resolution for that portion of the planning region included in the County Dublin Area, but refrained from taking this action in view of the imminent changes in Local Government administration in Dublin City and County envisaged in the report of the Local Government (Dublin) Tribunal and the County Management Act.

While a local authority is preparing a planning scheme, it is necessary that they should have power meanwhile to prevent private work taking place which might subsequently interfere with any feature of the planning scheme. Obviously, if it is intended that a certain street should be widened or a new street constructed, it would be necessary that we should be able to prevent the erection of any structures, the removal of which would make such a proposal impossible or unduly costly when the scheme would come into operation. The Town Planning Act; therefore, gives power to a planning authority once it has passed a Resolution to prepare a planning scheme, to control all development proposed by private parties in the interval. The making of an interim order of this kind is a Managerial function and the City Manager and the Town Planning Committee, from the beginning, have closely co-operated to secure that interim proposals, which are approved of, do not cut across the proposals under consideration for the planning scheme.

The Town Planning Committee, at a series of meetings from October, 1939, have closely considered the proposals of the Consultants and we set out some modifications which we suggest should be made in the Sketch Development Plan.

(Signed) ERNEST E. BENSON,
Chairman, Town Planning Committee.