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

That is exactly the point. The thrust of this Bill is that it gives considerable powers to the Minister, who can issue national planning statements, give all sorts of direction to local authorities and planning authorities through that. There are considerable powers for the Office of the Planning Regulator as a kind of enforcer to ensure the wishes of the Minister are adhered to. However, when it comes to mechanisms that might help to ensure the wishes of the democratically elected councillors and what they pass in the development plan might be adhered to, then the Bill is lacking. We are putting forward a measure to strengthen that. Having this happen after 20 months, in addition to the review much later on, would be a good point for the elected members to review objectives that were passed 20 months ago, and to ask what is happening on them. They are not going to bring up every issue. They are going to concentrate on areas of particular strategic importance. I have given the example of development plans, not just local authorities. I was on several local authorities which had objectives to publicly map the rights-of-way. The elected members felt that was important. The executives of the councils did not. They did not do it. A mechanism such as this would give the elected members an opportunity to try to follow through on that.

In the local authorities of which I was a member, many policies were passed by the elected members long before they became national policy, including issues around active travel, cycleways, sustainable travel and transport, which is a very important proposal that is now being heavily advanced around the coastal greenway and walking and cycling route. However, in one development plan after another these issues were passed by the councillors but not acted on by the executive. While a mechanism like this would not have ensured they all were acted on, it would have slightly rebalanced matters. We have all these measures in the Bill, power for the Minister and the Office of the Planning Regulator, but it is lacking in terms of elected members.