Victor Boyhan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Dillon. I acknowledge the significant work on the Planning and Development Bill. It has been a long time coming. The outline of the Bill was published and approved by the Government in December 2022. The Oireachtas Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage examined the proposed Bill extensively. I acknowledge the importance of all of that. There was extensive pre-legislative scrutiny and many witnesses, NGOs, members of the various planning institutes, developers and all sorts of individuals. It was a broad, representative group and was meaningful, which is important to acknowledge.

The joint committee published its pre-legislative scrutiny report in April 2023. I thank the Chairperson of the committee, Deputy Matthews, and members of the committee, some of whom are here, for their enormous work. Generally, there was great collegiality and support. It was a listening engagement and a respectful one, which is an important point - we are not all mad, wild political animals. We teased out a lot. There was a learning curve for officials and everybody else as they navigated this evolving process. It is very technical by nature.

I acknowledge the Library and Research Service. It is an amazing team in the Oireachtas which supported the committee and individuals in their work. I also acknowledge the Minister and Ministers of State, Deputies Noonan and Dillon, and the latter's predecessors as Minister of State, Deputies Peter Burke and O'Donnell, who still hold ministerial responsibilities in other areas. They were involved in aspects of preparing the Bill.

The Bill and explanatory memorandum were published in November 2023. According to the Government, the stated purpose of the Bill is to revise, extend and consolidate the Planning and Development Act in order to provide for proper planning and sustainable development for urban and rural areas.

At this point, I also thank Ms Jones and her team from the Department because they have had to put up with us for a long time. There has been a lot of questions and toing and froing. It has been a learning curve and journey for us all.

This Bill is significant, as we all know. It runs to 766 pages and consists of 22 Parts, six Schedules and contains 541 sections. It is mammoth legislation. I understand from staff in the Bills Office that this is possibly the third largest Bill in the history of the Oireachtas, so that is a challenge in itself. I thank the Bills Office, which had the enormous task of co-ordinating many of the amendments.

It is with great regret that I must note that the Government decided to guillotine the Bill. What does that say about parliamentary democracy? The problem is that when there is a massive majority in either House of this Parliament, parliamentary democracy suffers. That is a stain on the Government, quite frankly, which should not have happened. I hope the Minister of State will not contribute in any way or be supportive of any attempt to guillotine this legislation through Seanad Éireann. As former Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said, we are a revising Chamber. We are tasked with advising and improving or proposing to improve legislation.

Before I finish my thanks, I acknowledge an important and significant letter the Ceann Comhairle delivered to each of the leaders yesterday in which he set out a number of concerns. I will make this available for the record of the House because it is important. He dealt with the issue of arrangements required from the outset for these Bills and noted that the burden cannot be placed on our staff and the Bills Office regarding the process. They are here, willing, able, capable and more than supportive in the parliamentary process. It is important correspondence. Every Member of this House should have a copy of it, at least. It deals with a number of issues such as editing and grouping amendments and their admissibility, as well as a number of other issues. It is signed by Seán Ó Fearghaíl, the Ceann Comhairle and head of the committee. That letter from the Ceann Comhairle's office is dated 25 June 2024. It is important to put it on the record.

On the restructuring and resourcing of An Bord Pleanála, the board is expected to be renamed an coimisiún pleanála, despite the opposition of Fórsa, which asked me to raise this point, and the opposition of the workers of An Bord Pleanála. One can argue there will be commissioners, so it should be called an coimisiún pleanála, but let us listen to the workers in An Bord Pleanála. They had a lot of other things to say about An Bord Pleanála before, all of which came out in the wash eventually. I wish the ongoing inquiries in relation to An Bord Pleanála success. Given the various things that happened in An Bord Pleanála that should not have happened, my message to the Minister of State is that the inquiries into what happened should be expedited. We must hold people to account. If individuals are found to have breached in any way, they must be sanctioned because that is what the public expects.

I welcome the introduction of mandatory timelines on decision-making for the first time in An Bord Pleanála but there are no sanctions. What sanctions will there be? In front of me is a copy of a spreadsheet of plans for more than 20,000 houses that are stuck in An Bord Pleanála. I raised this with the Minister of State earlier. This is the so-called fast-track planning scheme that the wonderful officials in the Department down in the Custom House engineered. Without naming them, we know where some of them went. One went to An Bord Pleanála, one is in the Office of the Planning Regulator and there were many others. Were any of them held to account? Why, when we are in a housing crisis, are applications for 20,000 houses sitting in boxes in An Bord Pleanála and all it says is it does not have the resources? It is not good enough. I acknowledge, however, that in the legislation we will attempt to do something together about it.

Turning to the ten-year development plan, I have been involved in three county development plans for Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council. In that time, I gleaned a certain amount of knowledge. We are always learning and things are always changing. Planning guidelines have changed. I do not support a ten-year development plan. We elected 949 city and county councillors in this State only two or three weeks ago. In the Bill, the Government proposes to push development plans out to ten years, with a possible extension to 12. Let us not fool ourselves; that option is provided for in the Bill.

Any review has to be robust but there is talk of a review within five years. The five years are already ticking for the elected members. The councillors are elected for five years. When does the mid-term review start? That is an important point. The Association of Irish Local Government, AILG, asked that this be reduced to five years. It mandated us to do it - we do not have to. I am committed to that. The Association of Irish Local Government has made an ask, which I believe is right, and I will support it. I will seek to support that objective through amendments to the development plan.

I am particularly concerned about changes to the current judicial review process and the new fees regime. That may be the most controversial aspect of this legislation. This is all dealt with in Part 9. I will reserve my views on that but I intend to table some amendments, as do my colleagues. There will be extensive amendments proposed to that Part.

We cannot curtail citizen and community participation in the planning process. Aspects of this Bill will effectively curtail elements of proactive responses from our citizens. They have concerns. A resounding message I have picked up from city and county councillors, general stakeholders and citizens in community groups and NGOs is that more certainty, consistency and coherence are needed in the development plan. I know it is the objective to do that in this proposal but it needs to be looked at again. It also needs to be more concise.

I want to support a planning regime that will contribute to economic prosperity. I want to be clear about what I am for. It is not all standing up here to say what I am against. I support economic prosperity, quality of life, social cohesion and high environmental standards for the benefit of all. I have always advocated a planning system that is robust and makes quality planning decisions in a timely and professional manner following meaningful consultation and participation. I support proper planning and sustainable development in urban and rural areas.I have long sought to ask the Government to be honest and upfront and to publish the rural housing guidelines. I could paper the walls in my office with letters I have received over the Past eight years about these rural housing planning guidelines. Many will be aware of the Flemish Decree - the Minister of State’s official’s certainly will be - and its requirement to do something about planning guidelines.

The Minister of State ably represents our citizens, and I refer here in particular to those in the rural parts of our country. He will know from his own constituency office that they, within reason, want to be able to build proper, sustainable homes for themselves and their families. These are people who have worked and toiled on the land over generations and generations. They want to build there, and they want to live there. That is a very reasonable request and one that should in some way be reflected in this legislation. I do not think the Minister of State can go back out to the communities and talk about proper planning and sustainable development without addressing the issue of rural housing and the need to revitalise our rural towns and villages. Ideally, more people should be living in our villages. There are people who need support out of economic necessity and there are issues of land connection and ties, inheritance and greater family supports. I want to see that being reflected in this legislation because it is important. I support securing national and regional development strategies, maximising regional development, providing land, the interaction with the sea and the maritime planning legislation, etc. I have no difficulty with any of that.

What has been said about this Bill is important. The former Chief Justice of Ireland, Frank Clarke, was at a conference in the King's Inns, at which I was present. He has been quoted extensively. He stated that:

...government’s push to amend the planning laws will likely lead to a large number of legal cases being referred to European courts... the amendments will slow down the planning process...[i]f the theory is to make quick decisions to allow proper development go ahead, creating a system where there will be references to the Court of Justice of the European Union and the inevitable delay before there's clarity.

These are his concerns and he suggests this is counterproductive to the purpose for which this Bill is intended. That is a damning commentary on this Bill by our former Chief Justice. What does the Irish Planning Institute say about this Bill? It put on the record that the Planning and Development Bill is “not fit for purpose”.

At this point, I want to advocate strongly, too. I said this earlier today when we met with the Minister of State on the issue of local government. I raised the need for a statutory chief city and county planner that does not come under the chief executive but is parallel to the chief executive, and is free from the dominance of any chief executive to direct him or her on how to make proper planning decisions. Planning is a science and a skill and it also has a substantial common sense element to it.

In Scotland, there are chief planners. We heard this at the housing committee. This is not wisdom coming from me, it was shared with us by planners from Scotland. Scotland has a chief planner, which is a statutory function. In this country, on this very day, there are directors in the area of planning who have no clue about planning. They have never studied planning. They are well intentioned - and I am not casting any aspersions on them - but through their career path, they were appointed directors of service. The chief executive decides that. I am told this is outside the remit of this Bill, but I want the Minister of State to take that on board. Is there any other mechanism through which we can bring this in? There are law agents and architects. We do not ask inexperienced people to head up the area of finance. We tie that area in with accountants, economists, etc. Critical skills must be attached to areas of critical importance. That is a really important point to make.

I support proper planning and sustainable development, securing regional development strategies and regional and local development, which are important, as is the national planning framework. I will finish on one point, namely, the Aarhus Convention. We understand that the Aarhus compliance committee has some concerns and is going to go into their detail. We need to look at them, and that is something we can reflect in the legislation.

Finally, on 26 May 2024, the newspapers reported that the Supreme Court is examining the constitutionality of the Minister's powers to issue planning directions. The Government is considering these matters. It is an interesting read, and I will certainly circulate it to the Minister of State. Those are my overarching views, and I will finish up by saying that I am conscious there has been a respectful, robust engagement. Ultimately, how we deal with our amendments is a matter for this House, but I appeal to the Minister of State, given all the powers associated with this Bill, not to guillotine it.