Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)

I am delighted to have the opportunity of speaking on this legislation. A good point on which to start is the one on which Deputy Kitt finished: while I welcome this Bill, it is a pity we did not have it much earlier. It was during the boom years that we needed such legislation, to allow proper spatial planning and development and ensure the work that was required was done properly, avoiding the rampant development that took place in unrestrained fashion throughout the country. Over the last ten to 12 years, planning was in many ways a cowboy business. The situation was also quite bad in earlier years. An assistant county manager was convicted of corruption, a number of councillors were accused of taking bribes and a Minister had to resign. Inquiries into the planning process were set up and are still not complete with regard to areas in which serious abuses were identified.

I would like the Bill to go much further than it currently does. There are still serious problems with regard to zoning. The amount of rezoning that has taken place in the last number of years is incredible, as is the fact that windfall profits are still being made from rezoning. The Kenny report, which recommended that profits from rezoning should not be more than 25% of the market value, has not yet been properly implemented. Whenever there are vast sums of money to be made in any arena, the temptation is there to cut corners to ensure it can be made. Money was made hand over fist over the last couple of decades as development operated in a rather uncontrolled fashion.

In addition, spatial planning never effectively took place. Many of the flood plains of Ireland - not just around urban areas such as Dublin, as the Acting Chairman knows, but also in rural areas - have been built on. Development in Wicklow and Meath, on the borders of Dublin, has resulted in flooding of rivers such as the Dodder and the Tolka in the heart of the city. There are whole communities in my constituency whose members find it almost impossible to get insurance because sufficient steps were not taken to prevent flooding. In this decade alone we have had two serious floods in my own constituency which came about, we are told, because of building on the flood plains on the perimeter of the city. The same situation has arisen around the country, including in Carrick-on-Shannon, where many houses built on flood plains around the town were destroyed, and many other rural or semi-rural communities.

Extravagant building has taken place in areas where nobody is prepared to buy. Holiday homes built on the basis of tax incentives are now wanted by nobody. This is a result of the manner in which we conducted our business, not just in the planning process but also in setting Government policy. Anybody would know that one should not built on a flood plain. If one lives beside the Shannon, one does not build on an area that is lower down than the Shannon. Nobody is going to drain the Shannon in our lifetime; they never drained it in anybody else's. Because of climate change, most rivers now have a tendency to flood at times. The "perfect storm" coincidence of a major rainstorm with a high tide was thought to happen only once in 100 or 200 years, but we cannot expect that any longer. These are issues that should be considered carefully.

Similarly to the development of holiday homes, we saw today in the newspapers the consequences of out-of-control hotel development. We now have many zombie hotels - hotels that are surplus to requirements - due to bad planning and lack of control.

There is also the issue of the planning process itself. Most people who seek planning permission complain that the process is far too cumbersome and weighted against the applicant, while those affected by planning applications believe the process is weighted in favour of developers. There is always tension because of this.

My own experience is that local authorities tend to be too generous in granting planning applications without sufficient scrutiny and, as a result, decisions are often left to An Bord Pleanála. The board is making more and more decisions because so many planning applications that were granted rather too easily by local authorities are appealed. That is the problem. If the planning departments of local authorities did their work in the first instance and imposed the necessary restrictions on planning permissions so that people affected by developments did not feel aggrieved, there would not be so many referrals to An Bord Pleanála, which would allow the planning process to move more quickly.

There should be a greater emphasis on rigorous examination of planning applications by local authorities in the first instance. I have found An Bord Pleanála to be rigorous in its work, and it listens carefully to submissions made whether in support of or against a development. However, about 40% of all major applications in Dublin now end up with An Bord Pleanála, which is not satisfactory.

A similar issue about which I have a bee in my bonnet is retention planning permission. This must be considered carefully. I remember tabling an amendment to the Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill 2002, when Deputy Dempsey was the Minister in charge, to the effect that retention planning applications should not be allowed and that fresh applications must be submitted instead. If one built a house without applying for planning permission, as we saw recently in the case of a house built in a beauty spot in the Dublin mountains, it would have to be removed. In that case, as Members may have seen in the newspapers last week, the local authority directed that the entire structure be demolished and the beauty spot restored to its original condition. If we allow retention applications on a large scale, many people will simply get on with it and start work on their planned structures without waiting for proper permission, which is unsatisfactory.

To give an example from my own constituency, a large telecommunications mast was erected by a corporate entity, O2, just behind the houses in Claremont Court. Planning permission was obtained, but because nobody saw the application or knew about it, nobody objected to it. The period specified in the application was five years, but after this time had expired, the mast was not removed. The company then applied for retention planning permission. The local authority sought enforcement but because the retention application has not yet been decided upon, it is unlikely the case will ever appear in the courts. The problem is that the company was able to submit a retention planning application although it should have been a new application because the period of the previous planning permission had expired. This is not satisfactory and the problem is not addressed in the Bill.

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