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

These sections of the Bill are really problematic. We have gone from a situation where, prior to the establishment of the Office of the Planning Regulator and the SPPRs, local authorities had a wide berth - one could argue it was too broad - with regard to development plans. We then had the SPPRs, the Office of the Planning Regulator and the process by which the planning regulator tries to achieve consistency through previous legislation, as the Minister has outlined. We then have layer upon layer of what can only be described as draconian procedures to remove any discretion or scope for democratically elected members to have some variance, within the principles of subsidiarity as they would be properly applied. Enforcement would be a polite way to describe all of these draconian mechanisms, which are to enforce significant changes to the plans of local authorities. These would often be plans that have already been under significant scrutiny.

With respect to Deputy O'Callaghan's question, I am not sure if there is any role for the elected members in this procedure. There is also no role for the Oireachtas or the Government. It is really the role of the Minister, on foot of recommendations from the planning regulator. Apart from the gaping democratic deficit that runs through all of these amendments, it also raises the question of why councillors and a development plan are needed when there is this level of centralisation. How robust will it stand against legal challenge if, for example, this procedure is used and elected members have no say whatsoever in the final change to the development plan? I said this when we dealt with amendments to other stages in the process so I will not labour the point, but we are going down a very dangerous route. A balance has to be struck between allowing local authorities a level of subsidiarity and allowing elected members a level of democratic responsiveness to the people who elect them, while at the same time operating in the context of national planning policy and planning law set by the Oireachtas. I think we have gone so far to the other side that it is antithetical to good plan-making. It will also end up in real difficulty.

This amendment is just one small attempt to undo some of that damage. I think fundamentally that these sections of the Bill should not proceed and do not belong in a modern, 21st century plan-led code. If I were an elected member or a director of planning looking at this, I would be thinking about what my role now is. As it is, when I was engaging with directors of service in a number of local authorities during the last development plan review, they said it was the most restrictive development plan review they had ever experienced. That was before all of this is in place. I want to sound the alarm about all of these procedures.

The amendment is, in a small way, trying to redress the balance, albeit in the one section, that is, section 65, to which it pertains.