Mary White (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party)

I will be very interested to hear Deputy Bannon's contribution. We must look at how we do our planning and plan our towns. A place is not a home for a child if the child cannot go to school nearby or play sport in the locality, if all time is spent being taxied around by parents because the local infrastructure is not there. That is not what memories of childhood should be. When we are planning our towns and villages, we should put in the infrastructure.

An important component of this Bill is the new ministerial guidelines which will examine local planning. This is to be welcomed. In a local area plan in the Carlow town area, there were 2,500 objections to rezoning because the people in that area thought it was fantasy planning. Unfortunately, the plan went ahead but perhaps because of the recession we are now dealing with some of that crazy rezoning will now not go ahead.

I am delighted that local area plans will have to tie in with regional planning guidelines and the national spatial strategy. We all know that local area plans have been used often as the back door for dodgy rezonings. I remain confident that localities can be given the necessary planning despite the raising of the threshold to a population of 5,000 because county development plans will make the provisions for economic planning and ensure we have a good spread of housing and development in our towns and counties.

Unless we do this it will be too late. Now there is a chance that for the future we will have sustainable planning and towns and villages we can be proud of, not lovely villages with local vernacular architecture and, beside them, 150 brand-new houses that are completely out of character with the architecture and are not in keeping with the local towns and villages. As we all know from those who drop leaflets into them, many of those houses are empty. The only things that flutter in their letter-boxes are advertisements for supermarkets and cheap services people are trying to offer others because they are down on their luck due to the recession.

What will happen to all those empty houses? Planning will have to be examined. The Minister stated that where over-rezoning has taken place he will have the power to de-zone. If, as the Construction Industry Federation tells us, there are thousands of unoccupied houses in Ireland - the figure ranges from 50,000 to some hundreds of thousand - why are some county councillors now getting into a tizzy about this new Bill which will provide them with proper planning? It will not bring down the wrath of An Bord Pleanála or the Minister.

This Bill makes good sense for the future development of our country. The Minister said that many councils may be asked to de-zone in coming years to take account of the developer-led rezoning which occurred during the boom years. I hope we see this happen as it will help to prevent the rise of another crazy property boom. The amount of housing provided by some county councils, which made provision for many thousands of houses more than were necessary and for many decades, fuelled speculation and ill-advised property investment, which have led to so many problems. We only have to look to Monaghan for an example.

We all want to mend our ways and ensure that our planning can stand up to scrutiny. We should spare no effort in condemning councillors who want to assist developers and landowners against efforts to dezone. We need to ensure that we leave our murky ways behind us. Developer-led rezoning should be a thing of the past. When this Bill comes into force, one of our good legacies will be that we will not have developer-led planning but sustainable, well-thought-out planning that will enhance towns and villages and of which we can be absolutely proud.

People are saying flooding of the kind we just witnessed occurs only once in 800 years but many people, including Professor John Sweeney, an expert on climate change, stated that such floods will occur more frequently. Therefore, we must ensure that the appropriate infrastructure is in place to protect towns and villages.

See this speech in context