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

I move amendment No. 775:

In page 298, to delete lines 23 to 39, and in page 299, to delete lines 1 to 25 substitute the following:

“the authority or the Commission shall refuse to grant the permission concerned and notify the applicant accordingly.”

This section of the Bill is about refusal of planning permission for past failures to comply. Can the Minister of State tell us if this provision has been used at all and can he give us details in this regard? Certainly, in my experience, I have not seen it used. I refer to when it has been found by a planning authority or the commission that there have been past failures to comply with planning permissions and to having all these range of different things the planning authority or the commission may do in terms of forming opinions around this, because this has been an ineffective provision and it has not been used. The Minister of State might confirm that the language in this section is similar language in the existing legislation.

We are putting back into the Bill a section of legislation that has not worked, has not been used and has led to planning permissions being granted to people who failed to comply with previous planning permissions. Rather than going through the rigmarole of whether a planning authority or commission may or not do this and so forth, it should read that the authority or commission shall refuse to grant the permission concerned and notify the applicant accordingly. If we do not write our planning legislation with some serious intent in it, then there is no incentive for people necessarily to comply with planning permission in the future.

I have previously talked about and put in amendments regarding the whole issue of the completion of public amenities and facilities in public areas to the standard of the planning permission and how that actually often does not happen. We see very slow taking in charge processes that can take 20, 30 or more years in a number of instances. There are housing estates built in the 1970s where the public areas are not taken in charge. You get these ongoing battles between the local authority, the residents living there and possibly management companies that have been left to pick up the pieces when the developer is gone in regard to the public areas not being completed to the satisfactory standard for them to be taken in charge, that is, that the planning permission was not completed. We need to get out of this kind of nonsensical situation where someone does not complete his or her planning permission in accordance with the law but then can keep on getting more planning permissions and there is no proper penalty. It is the people who invest the biggest savings of their lives into buying themselves a home, who work so hard to pay off that mortgage and who go through all of that risk and stress, who are left paying the price of incomplete planning permissions. There should be no excuse on this. If the planning permission is not completed, the person should not be able to get more planning permissions.

Our legislation, as drafted, should not be full of get-out clauses. It should be insistent on this. That is what my amendment is seeking to do, particularly for residents in larger estates and the public areas, amenities and facilities that were in the planning permissions that are not provided or are not up to scratch. It would be particularly helpful in that regard, but it goes as a general principle. If I applied to the local authority to build a house and I do not do it as per the planning permission, why should I then be able to apply for additional planning permissions to build other houses or whatever if I do not comply with the law? That is what this is seeking to do, that is, to ensure that planning permissions are actually complied with.