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

I will respond to a couple of the Minister's points about An Bord Pleanála board and will then speak directly to the amendment. An Bord Pleanála board had a backlog prior to the crisis in the year before last. That crisis made the backlog larger. It would not be correct to say that staffing has not been a problem for the organisation for quite some time because it has been. SHDs, legally questionable decisions by An Bord Pleanála and those decisions being challenged in the courts also created a significant backlog. The transitional mechanisms for large-scale residential developments and the massive number of last-minute SHD applications, which were a consequence of the Minister's legislation, further compounded the chronic under-resourcing of An Bord Pleanála board. We will obviously need to wait until quarter 2 to see where we are at. There will be significant delays with the existing backlog throughout the course of this year.

The information An Bord Pleanála is giving is that fresh decisions are increasingly made within the timelines set. However, we are now about to set a series of new timelines. I am a strong supporter of timelines. When the Minister was last before the committee, I made the comment that many of us had proposed statutory timelines by way of amendments to SHD legislation back in 2017. Fianna Fáil did not support them at the time, but that is a separate issue. I accept that An Bord Pleanála has got significant additional sanction. Before she left her post last summer, Oonagh Buckley met Deputies O'Callaghan, Bacik and me and told us that An Bord Pleanála needs more than 300 staff.

Specifically on the amendments, the problem is that our local authority planning sections have a staffing crisis. A submission from them to the Department at the Minister's request outlined that they are chronically understaffed. I welcome that an additional 100 posts have been sanctioned. However, I suspect that if and when we get the current figures for local authority planning officers, there will actually be a net loss of staff, notwithstanding the additional sanction, because people are leaving to go to An Bord Pleanála board or elsewhere.

The context of this amendment is planning authorities getting more work as a consequence of what is happening with increased levels of planning applications, which we all welcome, and on foot of the additional roles and responsibilities relating to plan-making, as outlined in other sections of this Bill. In a context where we know they do not have enough resources because they have been chronically under-resourced by successive Governments over a sustained period, we are saying that if they are not able to make decisions within a certain timeframe, they will be fined. Having to repay a planning fee is a fine by another name; it is a financial penalty for not making a decision. It seems to suggest that they have all the resources they need and should be making these decisions within a certain period and that if they do not, they should be penalised. I do not understand the reason for doing that particularly at this point in time. Nobody on this side of the room is arguing against statutory timelines. In fact, we have been among the longest standing and loudest advocates for statutory timelines; they are a really good idea. However, they only work if the authorities have adequate resources.

Planning fees are already too low. When Niall Cussen of the OPR gave testimony before the committee, he made a really strong case for a significant increase in the fees paid to local authorities because they are out of date and way below what they need to be. Not only would the fees have to be repaid in some cases, but it could be multiples of those fees. This is already happening. Last year, An Board Pleanála paid out about €1 million in penalties where SHD decisions were not within the relevant time period under the legislation. There are better ways to ensure compliance. The real issue here is not whether we want statutory timelines, but the best way to ensure compliance.

When Oonagh Buckley appeared before the committee, we asked what she thought would be a better way, albeit in the context of An Bord Pleanála but it applies to local authorities as well. As somebody with long-standing service in the Civil Service, she set out a bunch of propositions. She said that sometimes actually paying a fine is easier than, for example, having to appear before an Oireachtas committee or report publicly on a statutorily required basis as to whether a body is meeting its timelines. This will not do what the Minister wants it to do. If planners and the woman the Minister entrusted to try to sort out the mess with An Bord Pleanála are telling us that this would create a perverse incentive, they need to be listened to. They are the experts in this regard.

What Oonagh Buckley said was really important. She stated that if An Bord Pleanála board had a big caseload and is trying to manage different things and if it has the flashing red light of potential fines, management will try to direct resources to address that, which means other things will lose out. Where an organisation is under pressure and under threat of losing money, decisions not exclusively based on the planning requirements will be made and will be subject to the calculus of the cost implications of whether a decision is made within a certain timeline.

I know that the Minister is not going to listen to us or that we are not going to convince him.

This is one of those issues where he has got it wrong. I urge him to go back, talk to his officials, look at the testimonies the committee got and rethink it. This is one where, in a year's time, if he is not scratching his head and saying we got this wrong, his party colleagues in local authorities will be dealing with planning officials who will say, "Your guy put this through and it is causing us a real difficulty at a local authority level." Those colleagues will ask the Minister why he did it when he was advised, not just by the Opposition but by people far more expert and experienced in these matters than us, why this was the wrong approach to take.