Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)

I was proud to know and to join some of the people in the Glen of the Downs when they were protesting against that road development. Last night, the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Roche, said they were professional protestors, but I do not think they were. They were ordinary, decent, normal people — good, bad, mad — the same as any grouping one would find anywhere, comprising a mix of different people. People like Gavin Harte and Adrian Murphy worked there and I would stand up and defend them. I honour what they did and they have been proven right. The basic point they were making about transport — that we cannot serve this city by providing more and more roads — has been proven to be true. They were thoughtful people who saw that protecting the environment is not just about protecting the Amazon forests but also about protecting our nature when we have it close by. I honour them for their stance in that regard.

In the early 1990s, a friend of mine, Michael Smith, dragged me into a case he was involved in for a simple motive. He wanted to protect the valleys in which he grew up. He saw that massive development was about to occur as a result of rezoning, so this ordinary person began to do something about it. Much bitterness arose from that. About half way through, he realised that as hard as he campaigned he did not have a chance because the other side was buying the votes that were needed. On cold days, I remember standing outside the public hearing, which was paid for by the developer. The shiny Mercs would arrive and the shiny shoes would emerge. Those developers smiled when they saw us protesting outside because they knew what fools we were. We did not know what way the system worked.

I listened to the Minister, Deputy McDowell, last night puffing his chest out and saying that he has to protect the State. To my mind, people like Michael Smith, Colm Mac Eochaidh and others who started to expose all this, were defending the State by revealing that the political system had been tarnished by widespread corruption. The key point was not to get heads on a plate and the key loss is not that of dignity or decency in the political system. The key point was always that corrupt planning was bad planning. People like Michael Smith, Gavin Harte, Adrian Murphy and Colm Mac Eochaidh could see that if we allowed our city to be developed in that way it would be at a real cost to people's everyday lives involving long commuting times and a lack of proper facilities, as Deputy Gogarty said.

That is the reason we tabled this motion, not to contradict anything that is going on in the Mahon tribunal or anywhere else but to bring to its senses a Government that still does not realise the cost and effect of such bad planning. The Government will not make the fundamental change needed to get rid of that rezoning profit which has corrupted our planning process and ruined so many communities.

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