Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

Section 25A of the Planning and Development Act 2000 required that every two years, Government Departments and local authorities set out the progress that was made to support the objectives of the regional, spatial and economic strategies.

Deputy Matthews is correct that just because there is a ten-year development plan, it does not mean that monitoring should be slowed down. Significantly, under this Bill, there is now no requirement for public bodies, Government Departments and their agencies to prepare and submit the report. There is only the monitoring report, which is prepared by the regional assembly. That is it, and it only takes place every four years. Throughout the discussions on this Bill, we keep talking about how in some places there are national policies or strategies, or regional policies or strategies, and these might mention some of the areas we are concerned about. Yet, there is a gap between the strategy and the objectives and the implementation. Monitoring is, therefore, key. If anything, we should be doing more monitoring, but this reduces the timeframe and reduces the obligations to monitor.

The rationale the Minister of State has given us is that it is a ten-year development plan, but that does not explain why there should be less monitoring. It does not make any strong case for less monitoring. What would make a strong case for less monitoring is if the Minister of State said that the high-level policies and regional and spatial economic strategies are implemented in full, the monitoring is going so well that we think we should do a bit less of it, and there is no need for this level of monitoring because the implementation is 100%. However, the Minister of State is not making that case. Nobody is making the case that the implementation is where it needs to be. Therefore, why should there be less monitoring?