Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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I welcome the Minister of State and her officials and thank her for the presentation and documentation sent to us. They were very informative. I agree with the Chairman's comments at the outset regarding the small number of people elected to the Dáil who have been found guilty of any form of corruption during that period. Since the foundation of the State, a great number of local representatives have been elected and very few of those tens of thousands of people have been found guilty of any wrongdoing. Having served on two local authorities, I see it as a great shame that all councillors and Deputies are labelled with the brown envelope culture. It is right for the media to highlight this issue where it has been found but we should not be slow to argue that the culture does not affect most councillors or Deputies. That is my experience of people across the political divide.

With regard to the transfer of powers, tens of thousands of people have served at a local authority level, with a handful found guilty of corruption. I wonder if there had been tens of thousands of planning officials since the foundation of the State, how many would have been found guilty of corruption if investigated? That is not to take from the great work done by planning officials around the country. They have always been honest and sincere, doing the job to the best of their ability. Nevertheless, any area like banking or planning could have people looking to gain improperly.

I have concerns about setting up a new planning regulator. We can have a discussion with the Minister of State, who must answer to the Dáil. As a Deputy I could find it difficult to contact somebody in An Bord Pleanála. I have made submissions in the past but the level of accountability does not compare with that of Ministers. With the current planning process, there is a development plan and the Minister of State mentioned there are over 400 of these. With the newly reformed local authorities, there will not be as many plans and the workload for the Department will diminish. I understand that it is currently quite cumbersome.

There is the development management level which has an executive function and the local authorities make decisions on individual planning applications. Elected members can make representations, as can the public, and they can be discarded or accepted depending on whether they stand up to scrutiny. There is the planning appeals process to An Bord Pleanála which again is independent. That is as it should be and I have no argument with that. There is also planning enforcement, which is part of the executive function. A resource issue arises in that regard with local authorities currently because we are at the other end of the madness that was the boom. Most of us would agree with that. There is a fairly comprehensive planning system in place. We are one of the few member states of the European Union to have an independent third party such as An Bord Pleanála to which matters can be referred. We should not beat ourselves up too much. We have a good planning system but we should improve it.

My concern is that with an independent body we are handing over huge powers to another agency. We are outsourcing government. The previous Government did a good deal of outsourcing and look where that led us. We must be careful when we outsource functions of government.

There are solutions, and the Minister of State, Deputy Jan O'Sullivan, mentioned her greater input into setting out criteria for local authorities and that local authorities members are complying with that core strategy, as she called it. I believe it comes under section 31 of the Planning and Development Act. Is that correct?