Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We thought that by getting Travellers to avail of a voluntary housing company they set up themselves, we would get around this problem, but a new problem has arisen. To transfer local authority land to the voluntary housing company, a vote of the local authority is required. The council votes on the Traveller accommodation programme, TAP, and adopts it. After this, it should be like all other planning decisions. My belief is if we really want to tackle this problem, we should take the local authority members out of individual planning decisions.

How many of all the thousands of planning applications made to a local authority would go through if they had to go to local authority membership votes? How many of them would be subject to such pressure that they would be put on the long finger? Make it the same as everything else, whereby it is a third party system with An Bord Pleanála. The present system is archaic and anomalous. Why have democracy in this case when in no other planning cases do we have this type of democracy? We have democracy in the plan, but we do not have it in the executive decision on individual planning.