Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I will speak to the full cluster of amendments because there are a lot of shared amendments here. I will take a step back for a moment. Folks who are professional planners, but for whom the Irish language is not a part of their daily life, are sometimes surprised when we table these amendments or have this discussion. They think of this as a planning Bill and ask why we are spending so much time talking about this other issue. A couple of years ago I was invited to speak about planning to the Irish-language planning officers of the Gaeltachtaí.

They are not planners; they are people whose job is to help organise, plan and co-ordinate the development of the Gaeltachtaí, especially the rural Gaeltachtaí. I came away from that meeting with the understanding that, because our planning system is invariably blind to language and the needs of language speakers as regards planning, development, housing and infrastructure, it is actively undermining, whether intentionally or unintentionally, the ability of people to live in our Gaeltachtaí and to assist in growing and developing them. Deputy Ó Snodaigh can speak to the detail of this cluster of amendments much more proficiently than I can but they are trying to remove the blindness of our planning system to allow it to properly assess plans and applications for development with regard not only to its impact on the Irish language in a particular area, but also to how it can encourage, support and activate the growth and development of the language and the community of language users.

I will single out a couple of the amendments because they are particularly important. Amendment No. 647 makes provision for planning applications for housing in Gaeltachtaí to be considered in light of their impact on the language and the use of the language in the language community, among other things. Amendment No. 890 is one of the most important amendments by virtue of its depth. It ensures that language impact assessments are a central feature of our plan. By way of explanation, Deputies McAuliffe and Brophy will remember that when we were doing our strategic development zone in South Dublin County Council, we were originally told that the plans had to be tenure blind, that is to say, they were only about the physical infrastructure and not about the people who would use it per se. Of course, that SDZ ended up not being tenure blind. It has very specific and positive tenure provisions. Poolbeg is similar in that regard. As we move increasingly towards a plan-led approach to planning and development, which is what we want to do, it has to be about much more than the buildings, the infrastructure and the interaction of the built environment. It also has to be about how it facilitates or undermines the cohort of people we want to live in those areas.

This is a very important cluster of amendments that would profoundly change and improve the quality of our planning system across a range of areas. It is not something that is on the radar of the Attorney General's review or of the officials. They have been focused on other things, and I fully appreciate that. However, if you listen to the folks from Conradh na Gaeilge and USI protesting outside today about the urgent need to ensure our planning system sees these communities and that its interaction with them, which is currently negative but which could be positive if these amendments were accepted, encourages the growth of the languages and the communities who want to live, work and play in the language every day, you will realise that these amendments could have a profoundly beneficial impact on the planning system. I therefore encourage the Minister of State and his officials to consider them. They will hear quite a lot of cross-party support from both Government and Opposition members of the committee and Members of the House. On that basis, the amendments really deserve consideration.