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

I thank the witnesses for the opening statements. I share many of the views and support many of the issues raised in the opening statements. The debate that took place after them about the OPR and who is responsible for the centralisation of the planning system is important, but it misses the point in a sense because, whether or not one likes the individual communications from the OPR, national Government policy is at stake. The OPR polices that and, ultimately, if there is a ministerial direction, it is a ministerial direction, albeit on foot of the OPR. This is relevant to my questions about the Bill. We have had a number of years where the policymaking role of the local authority, both the executive and the elected members, has been progressively restricted.

I recently came out of a development plan review and it is probably the most restrictive development plan review we have had. That is the view of many of the elected members in south Dublin as well as of the executive. It is a result of the mandatory ministerial guidelines introduced by Deputy Alan Kelly in the Planning and Development Act 2016, the statutory nature of the national planning framework and the special planning policy requirements introduced by former Deputy Eoghan Murphy and others in 2018 and 2019. We can agree or disagree with those measures, but they have increasingly narrowed the room for local authorities to be policymakers. Increasingly, they are policy takers, whether or not one thinks that is a good thing.

My questions on two sections of the Bill relate to that. Almost all of the witnesses, whether very diplomatically by the CCMA or more directly by the elected members, have expressed concern about the centralising trend in aspects of the Bill. I want to tease that out. With respect to the County and City Management Association, I am particularly concerned, not so much by the so-called national planning policy statements but the series of provisions in the Bill that allow for the expedited retrospective working of those statements into the plans. There will be a ten-year plan but, depending on who the Minister is and what Cabinet approval the Minister gets, sections 28, 62 and 120 allow for much more rapid change in the development plan without the same involvement of elected members. Is there a concern that, notwithstanding the fact that we need certainty and policy alignment, we might just be creating all sorts of other conflicts between that planning policy statement and the ten-year development plan? We could have the kind of situation we have seen in Cork county and Dublin city where legal challenges have been taken by local authorities to decisions because there are conflicts. I am trying to work out whether we are creating a new set of conflicts with these sections.

With respect to the elected members, they mentioned their concerns about the derogation from Part 8. I suspect when we see the figures for that later this year, it will amount to an awful lot and the issue will disappear. Are there other specific concerns the elected members have with the Bill, even though they have only had a short time to consider it, that we will have further reductions of the powers of elected members? I ask Mr. Kelly and his team to answer first.