Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I share these concerns. The Minister will be familiar with the idea of the shock doctrine, as outlined in Naomi Klein’s very good book. This is about how emergency and disaster situations are used to push through changes that undermine democracy. I have to be honest and say that I fear there is more than a bit of this here.

This is to vary a development plan based on an approval by the Government and the Minister but not the Oireachtas. It essentially cites a series of wide-ranging reasons the central Government, based on emergency considerations, could vary a development plan that is democratically made by elected representatives and communities. Looking through that section, the things that would trigger the right of the Minister or the Government to require a different variation in the development plan are very broad. I am seriously concerned about that. That seems to me to be an excessive centralisation of power.