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

There is a reason I am asking this question. Again, getting the explanatory memorandum would be helpful, but many of us who have been involved in many of the recent and controversial changes to our planning system, that then led to significant increases in the number of judicial reviews of residential developments, are looking at aspects of this proposed Bill to see if they are an attempt by the Government and-or the Department to resolve issues that some earlier legislation or section 28 ministerial guidelines did not resolve. For example, there is a strengthening of the ministerial policy statements. There is also an insertion into the material contraventions context, where these contraventions are in line with those ministerial policy statements. In my view, this is clearly an attempt to strengthen the kind of mandatory Ministerial guidelines, the SPPR, element of our planning system, albeit in another way.

Here, then, in the judicial review section, we have what could potentially be an exclusion of somebody taking a case not probably for a breach of national law but where there is a conflict with local law, essentially, which is the development plan. It is not that I am conspiratorially minded but I have been in this game long enough to be cynical at times. It does seem to me, therefore, that there is a possible cross-reading here which is really about strengthening the role of central government. This may be a legitimate thing to do. I refer to strengthening the role of central government in policy formulation and in the level of risk to an applicant for judicial review and strengthening the hand of central government versus local government and-or the citizen. Am I taking this perspective too far?