Ciarán Cuffe (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)

Running through this debate in the last few hours has been a consistent theme as regards people asking themselves what is meant by planning. There is room for considerable confusion and words such as "hierarchies" and "strategies" tend to cloud the essence of what is involved. It is best illustrated by examples. For me good planning is when children can be allowed to walk or cycle to school by themselves. Good planning is when an aging mother or father is safe in the family home at night. Good planning is allowing people to live, work and relax within a fairly short space of each other, rather than being forced into commuting long distances by car every day.

It cannot be overly prescriptive and needs to be consistent. The planning documents and plans we have need to form a consistent whole, and that is part of what this Bill is doing. In many ways it was inspired by a key problem, as identified in a court case, McEvoy and Smith v. Meath County Council. Until then we thought there was some coherence between the national spatial strategy, regional planning guidelines and the development plan. In that court case, however, it was shown that the wording in the 2000 Act which referred to having regard to the national spatial strategy and the regional planning guidelines did not cut the mustard. It did not have the strength that was required. That is why section 13 of this Bill provides that a planning authority shall ensure, when making a development or local area plan, that it is consistent with any regional planning guidelines in force for the particular area. That is a major step forward, as we have to integrate the national spatial strategy at a national level, the regional planning guidelines, county and city development plans and local area plans. Essentially planning is about making all of these, what I may term "ducks", line up in a row and work well for the entire community. That is so important if planning goals are to be achieved.

I have difficulties with the national spatial strategy. It tried to deliver far too much for too many. If we had a choice, regardless of whether we live in Loop Head, Dún Laoghaire or Gweedore, we should all like to have a high-tech cancer centre five minutes down the road. However, that simply cannot be done, given the available resources. A plan or national spatial strategy cannot deliver everything. The national spatial strategy was compromised in trying to deliver to too many people, and accordingly was diluted through trying to achieve all of that. If we can concentrate the right type of development in the appropriate areas, however, there will be a win, as regards education, health and job creation in so many areas. That will be to the good.

Deputy Clune earlier raised concerns about the requirement for a two thirds majority in certain instances. It should be relatively easy to adopt a draft plan that provides for, say, 50% approval, but if it is to be changed at a later stage, then the bar needs to be set fairly high. One of the difficulties is that amendments to the draft plan may not have been put on public display, so that members of the public will not have had a chance to make their views known. I believe the bar should be set fairly high for those last minute changes that can come about in the plan.

Before the debate is adjourned, I should like to deal with the issue of flooding over the last few days. If anything has concentrated minds as regards the need for proper planning it is the floods which have brought misery to so many people. We need consistent strong good planning to stop areas from becoming flooded. I mentioned this to one of the Fine Gael backbenchers earlier and he put it to me that all we needed was good drainage, rather than good planning. I believe we need both. We need the good drainage but we need the good planning as well.

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