Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

I am glad the Minister of State, Deputy Batt O'Keeffe, who is from my neck of the woods is present, as he will relate to a number of the planning frustrations and concerns to which I will refer. I welcome the fact that the Bill has finally been introduced in the House because we have heard rumours for a number of years about legislation that would attempt to streamline the planning process in regard to projects of national significance and importance. The prolonged planning and appeals process has been a significant contributory factor in delaying large-scale, important building projects. As a result, projects under the national development plan, for example, are way behind schedule and have significantly exceeded their original budgets. As Deputy O'Dowd correctly pointed out, the planning appeals process is far from the only contributory factor in delaying projects but it is a major consideration. In addition to the legislation, the Minister needs to streamline the planning process and ensure improved structures and timeframes are addressed in the other areas that cause unnecessary delays in much needed projects of national significance and importance.

Fine Gael supports the principle and thinking underpinning the Bill. Ireland is developing and progressing rapidly. Our population is increasing by almost 100,000 annually. Some 80,000 housing units are being built annually, while retail and industrial development continues apace. Cities, towns and villages are expanding at a rate we have never experienced. However, as the public sector has not kept pace with private sector demand, this is negatively affecting the quality of life of communities, while limiting the potential for development in many areas, as well as directly affecting our international competitiveness. Roads, bridges, tunnels, railways, commuter rail and underground links, airport extensions, port developments, energy and telecommunications infrastructure, gas and oil pipelines and terminals and waste management facilities which are unpopular but necessary are fundamental to expanding communities. As legislators, we must strike a balance between establishing a process that facilitates a reasonable timeframe for planning and appeals considerations and ensuring fair and balanced public consultation with a provision for legitimate objection and comment. That is the challenge we face in this legislation.

Unfortunately, the Minister and his Department decided that a broad consultation process was not necessary before introducing the Bill. This is a shame. It is such fundamental legislation that he would have received constructive suggestions and comment if he had done so. This is evidenced by the main Opposition party supporting the legislation. Seminars on the Bill which took place at UCC, for example, demonstrated that if people had been given an opportunity, they would have provided constructive criticism before the legislation was introduced in the Oireachtas. This may have eased its passage politically. However, it is not a bad start and, with amendment, will improve the planning process in the area it targets.

The planning process as a whole needs to be reviewed because it is unnecessarily frustrating for many. A totally inconsistent approach to planning is adopted by different local authorities. For example, arranging pre-planning consultations with planners is difficult, frustrating, time consuming and expensive for people who only wish to undertake small-scale developments. However, the inconsistency in decision-making among planners in different parts of the same county frustrates people the most.

The legislation aims to replace the two-stage planning process for major projects, whereby local authorities and An Bord Pleanála do considerable work on the same file consecutively. This is costly to the taxpayer and time consuming and the result is a duplication of work at times. Such projects are always referred to An Bord Pleanála. Therefore, the thinking behind the Bill is sensible. The planning applications for major projects should be sent to the board directly, if they are going to be referred to it anyway by local authorities. It is proposed that An Bord Pleanála will establish a strategic infrastructure division to handle all major projects. A strategic consent process will be undertaken for such projects, which will replace the current system. However, the dangers involved in switching from a two-stage planning process involving local authorities and An Bord Pleanála to a single stage process involving the board only must be addressed before the Bill is passed. Local planning considerations will not receive the same hearing and local planners, although they may be consulted, will not be involved in the final decision-making process. They will not have the same input. People with local development knowledge will have less of a say in the big projects in their counties. We need to ensure the new system is as watertight as possible to ensure everyone is consulted. It needs to be transparent from the pre-planning, consultation and application stages, right through to the decision-making stage. It needs to provide for a rigorous assessment of all projects, in particular related environmental concerns.

The new public consultation process being proposed, which may include oral hearings, needs to be credible. An Bord Pleanála has not covered itself in glory under the current system of oral hearings. The Minister of State will know what I am talking about following a recent case in Cork. I do not agree with Deputy Morgan on too many issues, but I agree with his sentiment on the Indaver proposal. The hopes of the community were facilitated by an oral hearing that continued for a long time, involving much effort and expense for people who had genuine objections to the project. They managed to convince the chairman of An Bord Plenála's oral hearing that their case was right. The chairman recommended that the board reject the overall planning application, based on 15 judgments. However, the board went ahead and granted permission. People will continue to be sceptical of oral hearings if they win the debate at such a hearing, yet lose the war when An Bord Pleanála ignores the recommendations made. That is what happened in the Indaver case on the south side of Cork city and it continues to cause so much grief. Comment and objections must be seen to be taken seriously. It must not be a polite PR exercise on the part of the board. This gives a pretence that it is listening, when the reality is that the final decision runs roughshod over the oral hearing process.

I welcome the section of the Bill dealing with the issue of working to a fair and reasonable timeframe. I look forward to discussing it on Committee Stage in order that we can come to an agreement between the two large parties. The process proposed by the Minister seems to be reasonable. A person or body, whether State, semi-State or private, needs to apply to the board for a decision on whether a particular project is of strategic importance. We must ensure that what is categorised as "of strategic importance" is limited and defined and not merely a process for facilitating private developers progressing profit-driven large-scale projects. That is not the purpose of the Bill. We could have a long debate on the planning process for other such private profit-driven large-scale developments. I would like to see more efficiency in that regard, but that is not what the Bill is about. It is about projects that are of specific national importance to the national spatial strategy, the national development plan or Government policies that need to be implemented across the country.

I wonder if we are giving too much power to An Bord Pleanála and overly reducing local authority input in the assessment process of projects of strategic importance. We need to examine carefully the input process for local authorities and elected members to ensure it is real, as Deputy Haughey pointed out. An attempt is being made to ensure a real consultation process, whereby An Bord Pleanála will listen to what local representatives, local planners and local management have to say. However, I wonder whether that will happen in practice, or whether An Bord Pleanála will make decisions based primarily on national spatial strategy considerations or Government policy. That is the big fear. Consideration of local authority views by An Bord Pleanála is already questionable.

A good example is the case of Indaver — I have nothing against the company — the application of which has been resulted in a long, protracted planning process. I was a member of Cork County Council when it decided to vote to ensure the site chosen by Indaver Ireland on which to build an incinerator would not be zoned for that purpose. Management accepted our decision, but Indaver appealed to An Bord Pleanála to get its way. Despite the outcome of the oral hearing to which I referred and in spite of the fact that the largest local authority in the country had voted democratically not to allow it to happen, An Bord Pleanála decided to allow the planning application to proceed in line with the national waste management strategy. If we are to work on this principle in the future, does local input matter if the overriding motive for a decision is guided by national policy? If we are not careful, we will see a power shift from local decision-making in big planning projects to centralised decision-making. If we can make this work to improve efficiency, then I am in favour of it. However, people need to be aware of the dangers involved.

My biggest concern with the Bill relates to the requirement for the board, when assessing an application, to have regard to the national interest on issues of strategic, economic or social importance. Government policy in areas such as waste management, the national development plan, the national spatial strategy and regional planning will strongly influence board decisions. They should do so, but not to the exclusion of other issues. In such cases the board becomes more than a planning agency. It is now taking on the role of facilitating and implementing often unpopular Government policies. In the case of the development of incinerators across the country the board is being used by the Government as a mudguard. Government Deputies do not back planning applications for incinerators in their own constituencies. Instead, we get helpless press releases claiming that the decision is up to An Bord Pleanála which is required to make its decisions on the basis of national interest and Government policy. Incineration forms part of the national waste management strategy, which people will learn if they read the small print. Therefore, the Government is driving the decision making process while blaming An Bord Pleanála for making the decisions. An unhealthy and undemocratic process has thus arisen in which An Bord Pleanála facilitates or forces through unpopular planning decisions and the Government puts its hands in the air and claims it can exert no influence, even though the Government's policies are driving An Bord Pleanála's decisions.

That policy runs into further trouble where we have regional or local plans that are inconsistent with national policy. God help An Bord Pleanála if it has to make a decision on a significant national project linked with decentralisation, for example, because the Government's decentralisation plans are totally inconsistent with the national spatial strategy. If a project of national interest is categorised within the target area of this Bill, there will be inconsistent strategies coming from Government and An Bord Pleanála will have to make a decision between the two. It will be even more common when local area and county development plans are inconsistent with national policy, forcing An Bord Pleanála to make policy rather than planning decisions. The members of An Bord Pleanála are planners who for the most part make very good decisions on planning applications but we are moving towards forcing An Bord Pleanála to make policy decisions. If we are doing that in an effort to achieve more efficiency in the planning process, we need to be very careful how we do it. For that reason, the House will see detailed discussion and amendments on Committee Stage before Fine Gael can support the Bill.

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