AS a regular visitor to Belfast from Sydney, I have noted certain similarities between the proposal to establish a special planning regime for "economically significant" projects in Northern Ireland and a system introduced in New South Wales some years ago, which allowed the usual planning processes to be overridden for projects determined by the State government to be of major significance to the State. The essence of the New South Wales system was to substitute Ministerial approval for normal planning processes in the case of these projects. Its objective was to reduce the scope for narrow local obstructionism to delay or block the development of key public infrastructure, such as dams and...
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