Dáil debates

Wednesday, 3 February 2010

Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill 2009 [Seanad]: Second Stage (Resumed)

 

5:00 pm

Photo of Fergus O'DowdFergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael)

He learned how to say "expletive deleted" anyway. My point is there is an incompatibility between the aims and the credibility of the Green Party which is now lumped in with the Fianna Fáil builders and developers and so on.

I wish to address some points of local interest and the question of archaeology. When a developer knocked down a listed building in Drogheda in 1987 in the middle of the night, I went to the High Court along with a colleague of mine, the late Eddie Doherty, because the local authority members sat on their backsides and would do nothing about it. We made sure that the wonderful people who knocked down the listed building in the middle of the night would sift and sort by hand through that rubble and take out every possible brick and piece of wood and anything else that could used in the restoration of that building. This case was a marker to show that people could never again do what those people did. They faced a fine of £10,000, the maximum fine at the time and the case was tried in the Circuit Criminal Court in Dublin. The law changed so that the maximum fine is now €1million.

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