Ms Cl?ona Kimber:

To put it very simply, what is rule of law? Rule of law means that there are checks and balances and that power does not centrifuge into the middle in our system. In Ireland, like in a lot of western democracies, we have the Oireachtas, the Government and the courts. Any one of those is like a watchdog for the others. The whole point of a judicial review is that a judge reviews the exercise of power by a body to make sure that body is operating according to its rules. To take a GAA match as an example, the referee is given the rules and a review of that would look into whether the referee was sticking to the rules or had gone off on a frolic of their own. That is what a judicial review is. Judges are allowed to look at the power being exercised to see whether the person with the power has stuck to the rules. We have seen this with the very public difficulties of An Bord Pleanála where the board and the people on it did not stick to the rules. They did not declare conflicts of interest, they did not make decisions they should have made and they went outside the rules. A court can review that and say that power is not being exercised properly. That is when we talk about the rule of law. Perhaps I am oversimplifying it but in a sense that is what we mean.

The whole point of a planning Bill is that we are putting rules out into the universe that will be there for 10, 15 or 20 years when we are no longer in power or doing our day jobs and somebody else will be interpreting them and using them. The people in these bodies are only human. If we make it so that power is exercised inside a black box and nobody can get a judge to look at whether it is being exercised incorrectly, that is where we would be concerned about the rule of law.

I am not calling out anybody's individual motives at this particular time and place but when legislators are creating legislation they are putting something out there that will be on the Statute Book for up to 20 years.