Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

Obviously, these issues are discussed in various fora, not just in the committee. The reason for national planning, balanced regional development and the national spatial strategy, on which we worked over the last few years, was to deal with the type of issues mentioned by the Deputy. The Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government is currently developing terms of reference for a study of the needs of gateways. That proposal has been approved by the cross-departmental team and it is anticipated the project will be completed by the middle of this year.

A few things have happened. One is the impact of the national development plan projects in overcoming infrastructure barriers. There are also the strategic infrastructural requirements of the gateway areas. The reason the national spatial strategy provided that all local authorities must have regional planning guidelines was to deal with the issue raised by the Deputy. They must examine how development is conducted. I have seen some of these developments. They provide grand housing but there were no regional planning guidelines in the past. However, they are now in place and people must consider from the start of the development where the school, community centre and so forth will be.

Deputy Rabbitte is probably far more knowledgeable than I about what happened in the Tallaght and Clondalkin area 30 years ago, when that mistake was made. It would be regrettable if we were still making the same mistake. We had to go back into those areas and provide schools, playgrounds and parks 30 years later. Of course, that turned the community around. Nowadays, developments are being built in areas where there is no problem with open space — if anything, in some cases they are being built on too open a space — so I cannot understand why they cannot get the school right.

Out of curiosity, I checked a few developments in recent days to find out if it was a case of the Department of Education and Science messing up. However, I discovered that in many cases the places were opened before the applications were even put forward. To be frank, it is just bad organisation in planning development. I accept that councillors work hard. There is a planned new development in Navan of approximately 1,200 houses. Last week I looked at a plan shown to me by the chairman of a community council and I discussed it will Deputy Cullen. Nobody could find any road other than the existing one. I was never an engineer and I would not be much good if I ever tried to study for that profession but if one is building 1,200 houses, it is a basic requirement to provide a road from it to the main road and not use a road that is already overcrowded. This is basic stuff.

Colleagues have told me that the answer to this is the regional planning guidelines. In the context of the national spatial strategy and the gateways, the purpose and logic of why the technical people have argued about ways to do this is to ensure that planning is dealt with in a far broader way. It is not an issue of putting 600 or 1,000 houses in Mornington or any of the other areas we have visited recently and then, when they are half built, to consider building a school given that there might be children in the houses. If the development is taking four or five years, it should be done in a better way.

I have also seen areas where that was done well, often because of good public representatives or councillors. These people were often berated because they wanted to get the development right and argued for it. Many local authorities oblige developers to make a contribution. There was a row in the House a few years ago about these contributions. However, it should not be a cost that is passed on. If the prices we hear one can get for houses are correct, the cost of the contribution should not be added to the price of the house. We argued about this and urban development costs in the House. The developer should be able to fund a contribution to the schools, roads and other facilities out of the huge profits. Local authorities are seeking this for the last three or four years, and so they should. It was argued in the House that it would just be put onto the price of houses. However, with the size of some of these estates, the developer has six or seven years work and is making an enormous profit so he has an obligation to pay towards development costs, probably even more than the existing amounts.

I did not notice that in the Institution of Engineers of Ireland report or a suggestion of what we should do. I accept many of the points the institution makes but developers should pay towards development costs.

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