Because the government recognised that our unsophisticated planning system would prevent anything from being built in the Docklands area ever, they came up with a new system where applications for development within the area could bypass the usual localauthority application/objections/Bord Pleanala route.

The DDDA planning system could hardly have been more different from the one which applied (and more or less still applies) to the rest of the country. The way things work within the DDDA area is that planning approvals are really just a matter of routine, provided the proposal doesn't stray outside the terms of an overall master plan.

The DDDA planning system . . . copied from approaches found abroad . . . wasn't refined enough. So this is what happened: in 2002, an architectural competition was held by the DDDA to design a new skyscraper . . . the U2 Tower . . . for a prominent site within its area. A winner was selected. But by 2005 everyone realised the winning scheme was too small to be economically feasible. So the building was redesigned to the point that, when finally built, it would be the tallest occupied structure in Ireland.

Because the bewildering planning process that applies to you, me and everyone else in Ireland doesn't apply to the area within the Docklands, the tower redesign was approved with the minimum fuss. No protracted Bord Pleanala hearings, no Prime Time Investigates.

At the start of this year the DDDA invited developers to tender on the approved, enlarged building. But on 12 October, when the 'provisional' winner of the tender competition was announced, the design of the building had, somehow, mysteriously, completely and utterly changed.

Instead of the design-competitionwinning-but-enlarged proposal which had been approved by the nodding of a few DDDA heads in 2006, we were now to have a totally different building which no one had ever seen before. A Norman Foster. In making the announcement for the radically changed design, the DDDA . . . knowing they wouldn't be hindered by planning setbacks . . . predicted the Foster Tower would be completed by 2011.

Now, since the 12 October announcement of the 'provisional' winner, newspaper and internet chatter has focused on the kind of business-page minutiae which only investment portfolio anoraks really care about: will sore-losing developer X sue the DDDA over some possible breach of fine print/conflict of interest/competition regulations? Or will X hold their whisht in the hope of having a crack at some new money printing project the DDDA have up their sleeves for further along the river?

What I can't understand is why the media, the opposition parties, the local community and everyone else whose been following the game has managed to avoid asking the central question, which is: how can it be, in a country where the average citizen can spend years of their life waiting for An Bord Pleanala to refuse planning permission for an inconsequential house extension, that the emirate of the Dublin Docklands can publicly present the soon to be tallest building in the state . . . a below-par McFoster . . . as a fait accompli through some shoddy, press-leaked 3-D images?

Am I the only one who thinks this is strange?