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Planning’s Position in the ‘Hollowing-Out’ and ‘Filling-In’ of Local Government in Ireland

Pausing for reflection following several years of rapid change, academia has recently witnessed a growth in literature examining how the purposes and organisational architectures of planning have been revised in a post-recessionary world awash with neoliberal critiques on inefficiencies in the regulation of land-use (Allmendinger, 2016; Feitelson, 2018; Inch, 2018; Jackson, 2018; Lord & Tewdwr-Jones, 2014; Papageorgiou, 2017). Ireland is no stranger to such recession-stimulated reform. Indeed, a torrent of transformation has recalibrated the Irish planning system since the great recession stormed across the Atlantic in 2008, sweeping away the country’s property development sector and flattening exchequer finances. This crisis supplied an opportunity for change by powerful actors seeking reform to the system of territorial governance that they perceived as ineffective and unnecessarily expensive. Hence, in the wake of the recession, change has been experienced at all levels of the governance hierarchy, but perhaps nowhere more so than at the level of local government where the majority of planning activity takes place. Ostensibly, these changes were initiated in an effort to streamline the delivery of services for greater efficiency. However, questions remain as to what ‘efficiency’ means and who benefits in this context. Surprisingly, there has been little published reflection by planning academics and practitioners on the scale and consequences of these changes in Ireland. Therefore, this piece addresses this deficit by providing an overview and critical reading of the recent reorganisation and recalibration of Irish local government within the context of a broader reorientation of planning. ‘Local authorities’ comprise the backbone of local government in Ireland, occupying the bottom rung of a three-tier hierarchy of national, regional and local governance. They are multipurpose organisations, but nevertheless perform a narrower range of functions than local government bodies in many other jurisdictions (Loughlin, 2011). Indeed, In contrast to several continental European systems, ‘Irish local government does not have responsibility for health, policing or most aspects of education, and its welfare role is limited’ (Quinn, 2015, p. 19). Instead, central government manages and delivers the majority of education and healthcare services in addition to most social welfare payments. Thus, Irish local authorities are ‘mainly focused on providing services to properties rather than services to people’ (Turley, McNena, & Robbins, 2018, p. 8). These services include the maintenance of regional and local roads, local planning policy formulation and the adjudication of development proposals, as well as local recreational and amenity facilities management. However, even in the context of a limited range of services, the last decade has witnessed