Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael)

This is an important debate that raises many serious issues. Politics and planning do not go together, certainly not when it comes to corruption, because the two seem to have been interlinked in this country for many years. Tribunals have sat for many years but we still do not know the outcome. Suffice it to say serious questions have been raised about the connection between members of different political parties, predominantly Fianna Fáil, and builders and developers and the rotten core of Irish life that was corrupt planning politics. Hopefully it is over and this legislation will go some way towards bringing that to finality. We must reflect on the role of politicians setting policy and intervening in planning applications. I do not know why Deputies, as opposed to any other member of the public, should have special powers in respect of planning objections. People approach Deputies asking them to support the objection as part of the community. The Deputy then has the right to sign off on that and send an individual letter or make an observation. One does not have to go through the formal objection process at present. The present system is rotten to the core. It is rotten because we have so many people living in negative equity and so many estates built with no services, no schools, no shopping and no public transport. It happens because the planning process was totally inadequate and in many cases corrupt. I say this because it is true and we all know it.

The result was the so-called building boom, where thousands of houses were built at highly inflated prices, driven and facilitated by the Government. The current Taoiseach, Deputy Cowen, is the only Taoiseach to go on the record in this House to say things will be worse rather than better for the children of the future. He said that as a result of the collapse in property prices and our economic difficulties. He and his Government are accountable for this. The change that must be made to planning cannot ignore the vast profits made from the rezoning of land by developers and landowners. The people who facilitated this transfer in illegal ways made a great deal of money. I am not talking about the legitimate planning process but backdoor deals, calls in the dark and the brown paper envelopes in a folded copy of The Irish Times in the Dáil bar. This has happened and we must get rid of it.

As a society, the fundamental decision we must make is that we can no longer allow situations where land is rezoned to endow a significant benefit to those who own the land. The Kenny report on building land referred to adding 25% to the commercial valuation of land. This happens in particular with agricultural land. A fair amount of money should be given but should be limited in order that this can never happen again. We can talk about a change of Government or a change of planning laws but until we make sure the planning process is fundamentally altered in this respect, we cannot face our young people in the future. As a result of this our young people are disadvantaged. Those who purchased houses at inflated prices are left with negative equity and without jobs. It is a disgrace and is primarily because of the economic policy of this Government and Governments in the past, particularly of the Fianna Fáil variety.

We are all paying for the relationship between the boom and the bust. Taxpayers will pay for it for an unknown period. In attempts to deal with this issue, aspects of the Bill refer to local development plans, county development plans, spatial strategies and new regional bodies. Regional bodies do not make sense because they involve people travelling from one side of the country to the other to meet officials who do not belong to the council and whom they will not see again. It is supposed to be based on the spatial strategy. Politics is at the heart of the national spatial strategy for which the Government is responsible. That is a fact. When areas were designated for growth under the current spatial strategy, one can consider the towns of Drogheda and Dundalk. Under freedom of information legislation I was able to find out little other than the fact that a document went to Cabinet, which will take eight to ten years to be released, presenting a choice between Drogheda and Dundalk for development and designation under the spatial strategy. The problem was that the accompanying documentation underestimated the population of Drogheda so that it was not included. I do not know what happened at a Cabinet meeting but clearly, the Minister, Deputy Dermot Ahern, who would have been present, did not bang the drum for his home county when it came to Drogheda. However, another Minister banged the drum for his political party, the current Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Deputy Brendan Smith. The record shows that when both Cavan and Monaghan towns were not included in the draft spatial strategy, he said: "You better include the two of them." The planning reason for this decision was a political planning reason; if Monaghan was not included, then Sinn Féin would win a seat in Cavan-Monaghan and how terrible that would be. This is on the record if the Ministers would care to look at it. Let us get the facts right about the spatial strategy; in some cases, the spatial strategy was a con. Not only was it a con but whatever good might have been in it, the former Minister for Finance, Mr. McCreevy, decided that the places not chosen as spatial strategy hub centres would be given Government Departments and there was one for every county and a smaller one for every little town. It was an absolute joke. They destroyed the good concept of a proper spatial strategy, free from political interference, based on good planning principles but flexible.

Look at what has happened in the greater Dublin area in the context of the current national spatial strategy. If the phenomenal growth around the greater Dublin area is superimposed upon a map of Ireland, it shows that this growth is totally disproportionate in terms of size. The shift of population to the east has had a very adverse impact on the environment, the type of estates built, lack of planning and lack of facilities. I refer to the time spent commuting by those living in the greater Dublin area. The quality of life they were living as a result of bad planning is a disgrace. It reflects very badly on county councils and on Government. What is needed in order to change the situation and how can it be made work? This Government is not making things work.

The Minister for Transport, Deputy Dempsey, brought in the Dublin Transport Authority and then the National Transport Authority and here is the planning problem. Deputy Thomas Byrne represents Meath East which is part of the greater Dublin area so from the national transport point of view, any new planning permission in County Meath, right up to the border with Drogheda, is part of the National Transport Authority and therefore there must be a transport plan involved in the planning application. Anyone wishing to build 500 houses in County Meath must have a transport plan but on the other side of the River Boyne in County Louth, a transport plan is not required and a developer can continue to build the sort of estates he built for other people. A developer is not required to have a proper transport plan. This does not make sense. It does not make sense that the imposition of boundaries which are not practical and do not make sense, is continuing. I cannot understand why the county of Louth was not included in the greater Dublin area and it makes no sense from any point of view. The only people who can gain from lack of proper planning are the developers and the gombeen developers and gombeen men who will continue to do what they always did, fleece the poor people of the country and leave them as they have left them.

The situation is very bad and although this proposed Bill may make certain improvements, unless we have absolute and total change and change forever, we will be coming back here in five and ten years time with the same appalling, shameful, disgraceful situation of negative equity and the madness to buy bricks and mortar totally out of kilter with prices and land values and the people are sick of it.

The Green Party is now part of this wonderful Government. A few years ago, when Deputy Paul Gogarty was a member of the Opposition he went over to the other side of the House, to a seat in the third row, during a debate on planning and said he wanted to sit over in the Fianna Fáil seats to know what it was like to sit on the corrupt side of the House. Those were his words, more or less.

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