Straight Talking, Dr Lorcan Sirr & Conor Skehan - Ireland's future must be plann

ed in a co-ordinated fashion, and not be placed in the hands of Finance

A ministry of planning could create the blueprint that would inspire budgets, in
crease revenue and lead to innovation
Planning matters: the proposed docklands headquarters of Anglo Irish Bank, work
on which has stalled due to a planning dispute
Planning has failed in Ireland. Our management of land has left a legacy of a pr
operty crash, unfinished housing estates and much, much more. At a so-called str
ategic level, the National Spatial Strategy is a deliberately blinkered, grossly
misguided, politically driven, waste of paper and will merely serve to prolong
Ireland's agony for decades to come. Three-quarters of all land-use planners in
Ireland work in development control. In other words the skills they are trained
in â their education in communities, health, culture, industry, economics, and how t
o integrate them â are wasted planning for the present and not the future.
But planning in its broader sense â that of making provision for the future â has a hug
amount to offer. Properly done, a plan should guide and not follow. It should d
irect and allocate resources. And this goes much farther than planning for land.
Ireland badly needs a plan that makes provision for people-centred prosperous fu
tures. It's often a difficult concept to sell, but Ireland has more than one fut
ure. What this means is that different parts of Ireland will go in different dir
ections according to their resources, skills and location. The west of Ireland h
as a different future ahead of it to the east or the south. We need to firstly a
ccept and then plan for this, not pretend there's only one future for the whole
of Ireland.
We also need to plan for jobs, growth, enterprise and development. We need to ha
ve regard for local wishes, entrepreneurship, commercial energy and cultural dis
tinctiveness. Plans that often serve neither the wishes nor the needs of a commu
nity are ignored, resented or resisted.
How do other nations manage to do this? More than 60 countries around the world
have a dedicated 'ministry of planning' (some use different names) which provide
a platform to co-ordinate sectoral plans and strategies for growth. In some cou
ntries the department of finance is a branch of this ministry. Imagine that in I
reland; the finance function being secondary to a national planning department,
and not the other way around.
Typically these ministries plan for functions such as agriculture and industry,
infrastructure and forestry, enterprise and social welfare. The list is long. Th
e important factor is that they demonstrate the need to have agreed and co-ordin
ated, high-level national and regional strategies for growth and development.
As an example of what they do, ministries of planning typically provide area-spe
cific objectives around which local plans for settlement and for infrastructure
are constructed. They are positive 'yes' ministries. Their plans are not abstrac
t map-colouring exercises. They have budget lines, staffing levels, and targeted
objectives for output, employment, tax revenues and capital expenditure. In thi
s system, a coloured map that shows land for a factory or school is backed up by
actions from half-a-dozen departments all acting in concert.
In many countries planning integrates all the plans with all the functions, and
co-ordinates each with the other, to bring decisive action to bear on a particul
ar place.
This 'joined-up planning' may sound idealistic, but it is eminently reasonable,
entirely feasible and even realistic. Not only does this save money and time, by
reducing duplication, conflicts and waste, it also improves, increases and mult
iplies the return on public expenditure. For potential employers on the outside
looking in, such co-ordination increases the attractiveness of a place as a resp
onsive and well-endowed area in which to locate investment.
Under pressure, the Department of Finance is currently preparing a four-year bud
get. However, in well-run businesses the budget supports plans and not vice-vers
a. It is interesting to see that the department thinks it can prepare a four-yea
r budget in the absence of a four-year plan. For what is it budgeting exactly? I
s there perhaps a plan about which we are unaware? Probably not.
The creation of a budget in the absence of a plan will surely guarantee further
waste of public money. The payment of debt is not a plan. The creation of jobs,
appropriately located according to the resources available, and not allocated th
rough some political whim, is a plan.
More than any four-year budget, we firstly need a co-ordinated plan with specifi
c outputs for each major sector and region of the economy.
Such a plan should be designed to facilitate and support innovation, risk-taking
and entrepreneurship. It should be area-based and locally driven, as central pl
anning has and continues to fail us. We need to harness the local loyalties and
energies that have been wisely and successfully used by our sporting and cultura
l organisations for decades.
A plan along these lines will then form the basis of both budget allocation and
of future revenue streams.
But a plan like this needs to be considered and carefully crafted. In other word
s, a plan that was not created by the Department of Finance, which is more likel
y to create a plan of parsimony and the self-serving protection of core public-s
ervice functions. It is not possible to successfully plan from within a departme
ntal silo. Planning needs to be done horizontally across functions, and vertical
ly from nation to community, and vice versa.
More than a directionless budget, enterprise, hope and purpose are pre-requisite
s for an economic recovery. Unfortunately, the facilitation of enterprise, the i
nstilling of hope and the creation of a real sense of hope won't happen by accid
ent. We have to plan for them.
Dr Lorcan Sirr and Conor Skehan are lecturers in the Dublin Institute of Technol
ogy
October 24, 2010