Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Batt O'Keeffe. I have considerable reservations about this proposed legislation in terms of how it is presented and what it proposes to do. It will not expedite the development of strategic infrastructure throughout the country but will cause more problems than it addresses.

The Bill is seriously flawed in at least two respects. First, when the Minister seeks to address problems relating to strategic infrastructural planning, he completely fails to address policy issues, especially spatial and social policy which contribute to good planning and which impact hugely on the quality of life of citizens.

Second, in his eagerness to facilitate infrastructural projects, the Minister has thrown out the baby with the bath water. He has removed the two pillars of democratic decision-making which currently underpin planning decisions, namely, the local authority and An Bord Pleanála. In doing so, the Bill makes the current appeals mechanism of An Bord Pleanála, the sole planning authority. Accordingly, the role of residents in the planning process will be eroded and limited to small-scale developments while the major infrastructural projects which will have most bearing on the quality of their lives will be beyond their scope to influence.

I do not believe the Bill will speed up the planning process by eliminating one of the current pillars of planning. The issue of High Court challenges has not been addressed by the Bill and by undermining the local authority and the role of citizens in the formal planning process, the Bill will give rise to far more legal challenges which will have the effect of greatly delaying planning applications. This is the exact opposite effect to the intention of the Minister. For example, the current unsavoury legal row between competing developers has created a scandalous six-year delay in developing the prime Carlton site on O'Connell Street. This is an enormously lucrative site and the hold-up prevents the integrated area plan from moving forward because a couple of developers are dug in. Developers have large pockets and, as we have seen, can take their case all the way to the Supreme Court. Residents, however, cannot take such action. Given the enormous sums of money involved, we may find ourselves getting bogged down in legal challenges. A national, independent appeals mechanism is required to which any person unhappy with the decision made by a local authority in respect of a planning application can make his or her case. This is the rational and logical way forward.

Although many pressing matters are omitted from this legislation, I am pleased with the provisions of section 9, which amends section 35 of the principal Act. The explanatory memorandum states:

This section amends the provisions of Section 35 of the Principal Act to enable the planning authority to refuse permission to a developer on the grounds of his or her past history of non-compliance with planning. The applicant would be required to apply to the High Court if he or she wished to have the decision overturned.

This means a local authority is not obliged to apply to the High Court to chase a rogue developer who has left a housing estate unfinished. Instead, the onus is now on the developer to prove he or she has behaved lawfully. The Labour Party has argued for such a provision for decades. As a Member of the Seanad, I argued some years ago for legislation to this effect. It is only now, however, that a provision will be included in the Statute Book to ensure that rogue developers who leave successive estates unfinished and in a grotty mess for years will face penalties. They will be refused planning permission if they do not conduct their affairs properly. This is a most welcome development.

I hope the Minister will consider accepting amendments to cover some of the provisions omitted from this Bill. The most urgent outstanding legislative provision relates to the recommendations of the Kenny report. The Minister is well advised to turn his attention to implementing those recommendations, which would regulate the value of development land. They would put an end to the obscene windfall profits made on land rezoning in recent decades. The Mahon tribunal presents us with a daily diet of stories of councillors and officials bribed by greedy developers who stood to make a fortune on rezoning even a small parcel of land.

The lack of effective planning and rezoning law has effectively corrupted the system in several areas throughout the State and, in many cases, has corrupted those working in that system. We can deal with this by implementing the Kenny report recommendations. Perhaps the Minister intends to do so in some other legislation but I would like to see it included here in order that it can finally be progressed. This would serve to eradicate the terrible greed and bribery that has been so much an element of the political and development business for several decades. This is the most important requirement of legislation in this area.

It is unacceptable that the law currently permits a developer to build a structure without presenting a planning application, erecting a notice and consulting residents. Moreover, having constructed a structure without the necessary permission, he or she is permitted to apply for retention. Many such retrospective applications are successful even though the very concept is a contradiction in terms, it being possible only to plan forward. Our system, however, facilitates backward planning and that is no planning at all. This issue must be dealt with urgently.

During a debate on local government legislation in 2001, the then Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Dempsey, told me it would not be right to abolish the retention provision because this would mean, for example, that a little old lady who may have forgotten to apply for planning permission for an extension would be penalised and given no chance to retain that extension. These are the terms in which the Minister spoke of the issue. It is not, however, little old ladies who forget to lodge their planning applications but big bad wolves, of whom there are many waiting to get their hands on profits and find a loophole in the system.

Will the Minister also examine the horrible modern phenomenon of management companies, which has exploded throughout the State in recent years? These companies are set up by builders to manage apartment complexes and housing estates and householders often find themselves obliged to pay management charges which generally rise sharply every year. The law provides that the developer's nominees in the management company can outvote the owners, even in cases where the developer retains only a single unit. I understand conveyance law may not be the Minister of State's area of expertise but it is within his general ambit. This law means home owners may never get to manage their own estates and that the developer could potentially retain control indefinitely. This must be addressed in the interests of the citizen. Once the home owner has bought the property from the developer, the latter should have no further say in its management.

Will the Minister of State outline the charges that will be imposed in regard to making submissions to An Bord Pleanála under this new dispensation? Perhaps he will take the opportunity to show his goodwill by eliminating the current charges of €20 and €200 for local authority submissions and An Bord Pleanála submissions, respectively. He should at least make some move in the direction of easing the situation for the long suffering resident who is the subject of a planning permission that may have a detrimental effect on his or her life because of the intensity of development taking place.

Ireland is a wealthy country that is very poor in terms of its infrastructure. The Minister is to be applauded for seeking to address this problem but I am not convinced he will achieve the desired effect by the means he has employed. Deputy Pat Breen observed that Northern Ireland has 100% broadband access while the Republic is at the bottom of the European league in terms of broadband availability. We present ourselves to all comers as an educated, thrusting young nation that is light years ahead of any other country. The reality is we are way behind our neighbours. When opening a new constituency office last year, I had to wait six months to access broadband in Dublin. That is incredible. It has nothing to do with poor planning but is a consequence of poor administration and management.

Look at the situation with regard to roads. There are roads of poor quality everywhere and tolls in inappropriate locations. We also have one of the worst accident records in Europe. Many of the problems with our roads have nothing to do with planning issues. Often they are caused by mismanagement and, as we saw in the Mahon tribunal with regard to a road project in south Dublin, ill-advised rezoning and corruption.

We had a much better rail network 100 years ago. Trains were much quicker and more comfortable. In fact, 100 to 150 years ago the rail network was not only far more comprehensive, it was also far speedier and more comfortable than it is now and we have not been able to do anything to change this. There has been much talk about reopening the western rail line, but we will believe it when we see it happen.

On sea transport, Irish Shipping no longer exists and we saw what happened with Irish Ferries a number of months ago. The Irish merchant navy has gone down the Swanee. We do not have an infrastructural network to deliver our goods internationally. Now we are about to sell our national airline, the only link with the outside world over which we have control. We have no merchant navy and when we privatise Aer Lingus, we will find ourselves without any infrastructure to allow us to control the export of our goods. That is a dangerous road to go down.

These are not planning matters; they are Government decisions or, in some cases, the lack thereof. Even on the matter of the second terminal at Dublin Airport, it has taken forever and a day for a decision to be made. The Government could not make a decision on it. In fact, it cannot make a decision on the privatisation of the airline either. It is on and off again. We do not know what will happen ultimately.

Our infrastructure must be well planned. A more holistic approach to areas such as spatial and social policy is required. We must know where we are going in the longer term. If one takes my constituency of Dublin Central, the port tunnel will finally be completed years after its original deadline at a price three or four times the original estimate. The situation with the Luas was the same. The timescale was totally out of synch with what it should have been, as was the price. The metro will be built in due course, although "in due course" is probably the operative part of the sentence.

A further series of developments is due to take place in Dublin Central. The DIT is moving to a site in Grangegorman; Dalymount Park, the grounds of Bohemians Football Club is to be sold to a developer; Mountjoy Prison is being closed down and will be sold to a developer, if the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform is to be believed, while the children's hospital at Temple Street and the Rotunda Maternity Hospital are to be relocated to a new site adjacent to the Mater Hospital, if the Taoiseach gets his way. This adds up to massive development in a particular part of inner city Dublin. What will the planning process do with this? It will deal with each of these projects individually. Why not have an integrated area plan to deal with all of them? Otherwise, a certain type of development will be constructed on the prison site, while across the road another development will go up on the Dalymount Park site. Further down the street, the new DIT college will be built with no thought given to addressing transport needs or an integrated network of communications. How are people going to get to the college or hospital? Phibsboro is already a massive bottleneck.

Will the Bill address any of these issues? I do not think it will. It will take each of these major developments and streamline the planning process for each one or attempt to ensure a decision is reached on each of them quickly. Will it improve the final result, or will we still have various parts with no interconnecting link? I fear the latter will happen in the case of the aforementioned developments.

We need a broad spatial plan. We also need integrated area or regional plans for a collective of developments. That is not happening. Currently, developments are proceeding totally independently of each other, with no interconnection. The result is often a dog's dinner, with poor communications systems, a snarling up of traffic and difficulties for people in getting to work. Lop-sided developments take place because of a failure to look at the broader picture. The Minister has not addressed this issue in the legislation. He must look at the broader picture and address the issues causing so much grief. Implementation of the Kenny report would sort out the rezoning problems. The Minister must also tackle management companies to deal with the management of estates, as well as the charges local residents have to pay. He must also deal with the issue of planning retention, the greatest anomaly. I do not know who came up with the idea, but it has nothing to do with good planning.

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