Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

These amendments have not come out of nowhere. There has been a significant effort by organisations, many of which the Minister knows, including Conradh na Gaeilge, to ensure a Bill that was in real terms blind to the interaction of the planning system and Irish-language speakers and communities would be addressed. Much of our discussion concerns issues those organisations have rightly asked us to include.

I made the point yesterday that part of the difficulty is the planning system's blindness to how it interacts with and impacts on Irish-language speakers, families and their communities in terms of lived experience and geographic location. The Minister said the real issue was within Gaeltachtaí themselves. The point we are trying to make is one of the reasons Irish-language speakers, whether in fully designated Gaeltachtaí, language planning areas or Irish-language networks, are so keen these types of amendments be included in the various stages of plan-making is because people outside those communities have been ignoring their needs. Therefore, the plans have not reflected planning actions and outcomes that are consistent with the planning Act and with the need for our planning system to support the use and growth of the language as a living language.

We will deal with the substance of the national planning statements when we get to those sections, but there is no inconsistency with having a set of national planning statements, as the Minister has outlined, on a particular set of issues, the objective of which is to ensure consistency of approach across development plans, while at the same time, in the statutory framework underpinning the development plan process, naming things which are important to be included. I would argue the two things are complementary. Saying we do not need any of these amendments in the development plan review process, the development plan process or the housing development strategies in the development plans fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between the development plan process and whatever mechanism we have for setting Government policy. I am surprised. You could then argue for deletion of all of the sections we are looking to amend which set out the areas we want the development plan review and the housing sections of the development plan to have cognisance of and just let the Department and the Minister, through the Cabinet, churn out national planning policy statements and we can dispense with the development plan. I know that is not what the Minister is saying but that is the logical outcome of saying he does not need it in these sections.

I suspect and am happy to make a wager with the Minister that it will be a very long time before national planning policy statements on the matters we are discussing are produced, in part because the Minister will have a significant amount of work dealing with all his transitional arrangements and section 28 guidelines and deciding which ones of those he wants to make national planning policy statements. He has another set of areas of policy statements which one presumes are in gestation. I suspect this is not on that list. Separate to the Gaeltacht planning guidelines and the amendments to include Gaeltachtaí in the priority area plans, if the Government were to run its full course until next year, I would be amazed if there was, subject to the passage of this Bill, a national planning policy statement on that matter. If I am wrong and the Minister is working on it, please let us know and give us the details. There is either a fundamental misunderstanding or a failure to recognise the weight of argument from Irish-language speakers in a host of Irish language speaking settings who are keen these areas of our planning system are, for once, required to have visibility of those communities.

The Irish-language networks are a good case in point. I welcome the Minister's proposal to have Gaeltachtaí included in the priority plans. That is helpful, but it places no requirement on our planning system and development plan process to have active and live regard in a development plan review to further supporting those. We are lucky in south Dublin because there is a good relationship between officials and the people who led the campaign and secured network status in Clondalkin. However, what happens if the official in the planning department just does not think this is important and is not as supportive as the Minister and members of the committee of the development of the Irish language and its speakers? It is precisely because networks do not have the same status that they should be included in various elements of these amendments. I know the Minister will not support the amendments but I urge him to at least consider the argument we are putting forward about placing a set of requirements on our planning authorities to think these things through.

The Minister mentioned amendment No. 1130 in this grouping. It concerns something I do not understand. It relates to a proposal to put in the evaluation section of the portion of the Bill dealing with the Office of the Planning Regulator a requirement to examine these issues.

I note the Minister is looking for the wording there. By way of being helpful, in that section of the legislation dealing with the planning regulator evaluation or review, it is to include "any relevant language plans agreed in accordance with the Gaeltacht Act 2012 relevant to a Gaeltacht Language Planning area, Gaeltacht Service Town or Irish Language Network within the" functional area of the development plan. This is really important because, as he will be aware from his long experience, even if one were minded to support my party's amendment or even if there were priority area plans for Gaeltachtaí, it is one thing having those plans but there is a long distance between having a plan and having it implemented. He will also be aware that the planning regulator produced a very important report into Traveller accommodation plans and the development plan process. We all have a statutory requirement to have Traveller accommodation in our development plans. Many of those, as he will be aware, remain chronically unimplemented. There was an independent review commissioned by one of the Minister's predecessors, an expert group on Traveller accommodation, which showed the extent to which, even when one gets something into the plan such as a Traveller accommodation programme, non-implementation can be significant. The regulator, because he or she is empowered under the current Act, was able to conduct a significant review which has been helpful, at least in exposing those matters.

Amendment No. 130, essentially, would allow something similar with respect to the development plan and planning elements that we are talking about here. If there is nobody to ensure this happens, even, for example, if the Minister has the strongest national planning policy statement and set of guidelines that he could imagine, if there is no independent review function the issue could drift indefinitely. Separately to the Minister's arguments on those, I would like to hear explicitly his unwillingness to give the OPR some role, whether it is in terms of the his own propositions around Gaeltachtaí and priority area plans or the issue more generally because that is one of the key functions of the regulator and it should extend to this area as it does to others.