Emmet Stagg (Kildare North, Labour)

The planning conditions imposed by county managers in this regard are not for a limited period. They are intended to be a permanent feature, thereby, transferring responsibility from the council to the individual householder.

I refer to a housing development at Clane Road, Kilcock, County Kildare, comprising 122 houses and 56 flats. Condition No. 43 of the planning permission states:

A management company shall be set up in order to manage the communal activities of the development. Prior to the commencement of the development, details of the management company shall be submitted to the planning authority for approval, with particular emphasis on the provision of sanitary services. Each property owner shall be a party to the management company and the management agreement shall be registered on the relevant property folios in the Land Registry upon the sale of each individual property.

The man who signed his name to that planning condition had no intention of ever taking that estate in charge. We are asking the Minister to call a halt to the managers' gallop and to have them reverse the decisions taken, thereby preventing a recurrence.

Collectively and individually, county managers represent a significant democratic deficit in our decision-making process. Large tranches of power previously in the remit of elected representatives have been transferred to them and they exercise that power with impunity, ignoring the elected representatives of the public. It is time to put a stop to their gallop, remove them from their highly paid ivory towers and give back to the people, through those they elect, the power that is rightly theirs. The Minister has first-hand experience of the issue I have raised. I call on him to act on this while he has the opportunity. He is aware, on the basis of what is happening in his constituency, of the need for change and I assure him he will have our strong support for action to replace county managers with democratically elected chairmen or mayors with the same powers managers exercise. However, I digress from the main issue.

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