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

I will again quote from the Mahon tribunal recommendations on planning, particularly as they are directly relevant to this provision in section 65. The recommendations state:

... the Tribunal is concerned that recent changes in the planning system have resulted in an over-centralisation of power in the hands of the Minister for the Environment [now the Minister for housing] which is not subject to sufficient checks and balances.

The Minister of State was correct when he said that on foot of the issuance of a new national planning policy statement, as it is called, there will be a process by which city and county development plans, local area plans, if they still exist, priority area plans and urban area plans will be required to be retrospectively amended if they are believed not to be in accordance with the policy statement. Obviously, there is a role for the Planning Regulator. We will discuss those issues when we get to those sections and the relevant amendments. However, section 65 provides for what is called in the Bill, “Urgent direction requiring chief executive to vary development plan”.

Here is the real-world scenario we are talking about. The Government of the day, at the request of the Minister, makes a profound change to planning policy which has a statutory effect. There is then a requirement for local authorities to assess whether their development plans are in accordance with that, and they set out that procedure in writing to the Department and the regulator. They either then amend their plan or they do not amend their plan. If they do not amend their plan, the Planning Regulator steps in and seeks a ministerial direction. However, if there continues to be a stand-off between the local authority and the Government, what this allows for is an urgent direction from the Minister, with the approval of the Government, to instruct a chief executive to vary the plan. In many ways, that could be very material.

Here is the issue.

The development plan is democratically agreed by the elected members after a long consultation process. I am not arguing that there should not be a mechanism to force a material alteration of the development plan, but it should be imposed by a democratic decision of a higher legislative authority, that is, the Government. If the State is saying that it has changed a policy that has statutory effect and is insisting that the democratically agreed development plan has to change, then that decision should be taken by a higher democratic authority, namely, the Oireachtas. It is a straightforward principle that is very reasonable because it would provide greater democratic legitimacy and it would be stronger in court. While it is the same principle as the previous one, I am of the view that the stakes here are much higher. That is because, essentially, we are talking about a decision by the Government taken behind closed doors at Cabinet, with no meaningful scrutiny because of Cabinet confidentiality, overriding a democratic decision of a democratically elected body. If we are going down the road of overriding democratic decisions of democratically elected bodies, I would rather that decision was made by a larger and more powerful democratic body, namely, the Oireachtas. I can see no reason why this should be a decision of Government; it should be a decision of the Oireachtas.