Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank both Deputies for the amendments. I can see some merit but we would have to balance this. If we recall our discussion a number of weeks ago on the role of councillors and decisions that are made, a design could go out in draft form, as it does, and if public submissions are then received, the Part 8 can, and in many instances is, amended on the basis of those public submissions. The people who decide on the Part 8 application are the members elected by the public. I see some merit in the arguments around a substantial change to an application. I could give the committee loads of examples from my area, as I am sure could Deputy O'Callaghan, who is also in the Fingal County Council area, and Deputy Ó Broin, who is in the South Dublin County Council area, of where a Part 8 proposal goes forward and submissions are received. The submissions are obviously a part of the proposal that comes forward and then the councillors debate and discuss with the executive what potential changes will be made. I will look at this. I give that commitment. I will see if there is a way of balancing this.

For every Part 8 where there is a change - I again ask what is "substantial" - that the public want, based on submissions, and the councillors say to the management team that they want to change A, B and C, for example, to move that ramp to here, move the green space, change the permeability between areas or whatever else, it would then have to go back out for a further public display. While I see the merit with substantial changes where something is completely different from what was put forward, in many instances that is driven because of the public consultation process, which is a good thing.

We talked about the role of councillors. I get the rationale behind what the Deputies are saying because we do not want something that is completely and utterly different to what was proposed. This is a role whereby the local authority members bring forward the views of the public, as well as their own views as people who were elected. They are the ones who are elected to make these decisions. By bringing in something like this, which I will look at, it would be saying that councillors who are elected by the people have made those changes but we are not accepting them and they have to go out for further consultation. Does that diminish the role of councillors in making those decisions on behalf of their constituents or the public consultation process? I do have sympathy for this element of it though, in cases where there would be some very significant changes to it. The Deputies can look at what we discussed with regard to other applications where additional information comes in and it is a big change to the original application and how to balance that. We could have a look at how we would balance this but a lot of the substantial changes would come out of the public consultation process. I have seen that myself on a regular basis and it works.

What I do not want to do is to bring something in that is going to add another round of the Part 8 process. Perhaps there is a threshold that we can look at in regard to what would be a substantial change. We must balance it with the role of the councillor in advocating for views brought forward by communities or individuals. Any of those changes would be reflected as well in the chief executive's report. When the public submissions come in, they are collated, they are all available for everyone to see and then they are summarised as part of a Part 8 process that goes before a local authority. The chief executive's report would then say he or she is changing A, B and C of this Part 8 and would give their rationale. I understand where the Deputies are coming from but I think we will have to work on it further because the last thing I want to do is to say that basically councillors only get to make a provisional decision. We need to be wary of that.