Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chair and colleagues for facilitating me as I have to speak in the Dáil Chamber. I have been listening and many residents' associations will also be listening with interest to the discussion of the legal embodiment they may seek to favour.

My amendment No. 959 is very much a stand-alone one. It seeks to insert a new section 252 into the legislation. I spoke in the Dáil about this before Christmas and also spoke on Second Stage of the Bill about this. The Minister responded quite positively, at least in principle, to what we are seeking to do here. The purpose of the amendment is to introduce a new offence relating to abuse of the planning objection process for financial gain. It would create an offence for a person directly or indirectly, whether for themselves or for any other person, to request, accept or agree to accept money from another person, or offers, etc., to give money to another person in consideration of the person to whom money is given or sought to be given to refrain from making an application for Part 9 judicial review or withdrawing such an application if it has been made. The offence would not apply to cases where compensation is claimed for an injury to a right or interest already known to the law or to agreements regarding costs.

The background to this is in recent times we have become increasingly aware of concerns around abuses of the planning system. Particular aspects were exposed on "RTÉ Investigates" before Christmas. There have also been reports about a number of incidents where individuals have sought to abuse the planning system for financial gain and I identified an instance of this before Christmas in the Dáil. The amendment makes exceptions in the sense local residents affected by a planning decision that might adversely affect them would not be criminalised by our amendment. We are seeking to tackle this harmful practice that undermines confidence in the planning system and which can also help to create delays in the process. It is to tackle bad faith working of the planning system and we seek to help restore confidence in the planning process to prevent corruption at the source. I am interested to hear the Minister of State's view on it. As I said, the Minster seemed quite receptive to the principle of this.