Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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There is a lot of history to this particular issue. It is worth putting some of that on the record of the committee. This is not a minor amendment. I support the Chair's amendment. It is maybe a more elegant version of my own. We used to have national spatial plans. Those national spatial plans were not implementable because they were not statutory. Therefore, a decision was rightly taken to ensure the successor to the national spatial plan would be a statutory plan. That means it has the force of law. One of the important aspects to understand about the national planning framework, particularly the specific planning policy requirement, SPPR, contained within it is that they are law. There is no other way to describe them.

Deputy Alan Kelly was the Minister for the environment when the legislation underpinning the production of the first national planning framework was produced. We had substantial rows about this in 2018 and 2019 on the floor of the Dáil when he was then in opposition. Deputy Kelly was categorical that the legislation that he oversaw as Minister not only provided for a debate on the national planning framework, which we had when the last plan was produced, but a vote, and that the plan would have to be approved by the Houses of the Oireachtas because it is law. You cannot have a situation where a law as profound in its impact for every part of the State could be approved by a Minister or the Minister and the Government. It is not conscionable that that is how laws would be made.

However, because of the confidence and supply arrangement, and the particular peculiarities of that arrangement, the Government of the day, namely the last Government, contrived to deny the Oireachtas the vote. This is really important because it is not my opinion that there should have been a vote. Deputy Alan Kelly repeatedly said on the floor of the Dáil that this was not either within the spirit or the letter of the relevant legislation. That explanation was just for the Chair's benefit.

There should have been a vote on the national planning framework. Previous legislation required that. In fact, what is most egregious about sections 19 and 21, to which the amendments of both Chair and myself relate, is that it changes it. It codifies the situation that emerged in confidence and supply arrangement that there would not be a vote. One of the consequences of that is exactly as the Chair said. Backbench politicians from Government parties can rail against all sorts of matters in our planning system while their Minister and their Government quietly enact those said matters. That is the very worst way of making legislation.

Also, the fact the national planning framework does not require the democratic approval of the Oireachtas makes it legally weaker. One of the challenges in some of the judicial reviews of developments has been due to the way in which the SPPRs jar with specific details of the city and county development plans. That is going to continue into the future, albeit hopefully to a lesser extent than it has in the recent past.

The fundamental point is the idea of allowing a Minister, with the approval of Cabinet, to pass laws without any reference to or any involvement of the Oireachtas. Again, it goes back to Deputy O'Callaghan's point around the Mahon tribunal expressing enormous concern at the over-concentration of power within the hands of what was then the Minister for the environment. Yet here we are stripping away the provisions of previous legislation, albeit provisions that were ignored when the national planning framework was last provided for.

I can see no set of circumstances where this amendment could not be accepted. I can see no justification for why a Government would say, "We do not want a vote of the Oireachtas" other than it believes it would not get the support of backbench Members.

By not putting it to a vote, therefore, the Government might be able to get through the policies it wants. This is the very opposite of democracy and an approach I do not think is defensible under any set of circumstances. I will be really interested to hear the view of the Minister of State. I suspect that if he reads out a note, it will not be one he necessarily concurs with. I will be really interested, though, to hear how he can justify a statutory plan that has the force of law and is not voted on by any democratically elected body, particularly the Parliament of the State. For me, this is one of the really problematic parts of this Bill, and it is not the last time we will be discussing it in the course of the amendments.