Ciarán Cuffe (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)

I can empathise with the concerns of Deputy Tuffy. With regard to the Smith v. Meath County Council, the issue was the regional planning guidelines and the county development plan. To my recollection it did not involve the co-ordination between adjoining development plans. I made a similar mistake this morning in discussion with officials on the use of these words and phrases. This amendment concerns itself with how two adjoining development plans take each other into account. The phrase we are using is "take into account" instead of "have regard to". There has been consultation with the Attorney General on the best form of words in this case.

The Deputy alluded to the second issue. What if the wrong decision is made by a local authority? The last position a Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government wants to be in is to say a local authority's decision is wrong. I like the suggestion of the issue going to a higher authority that is not the Minister but there is a problem. If, for example, An Bord Pleanála were to be given a responsibility of oversight of development plans, as the board would have to adjudicate on individual planning decisions there would always be a conflict in such cases. It would not be as easy as giving the board oversight in this regard.

The Bill in broad terms will ensure there is much less toing and froing between the Minister and relevant local authorities. That is good because the last thing the Minister for the Environment wants is to consider individual development plans from the 88 planning authorities around the country. Amendment No. 7 proposes the substitution of "have regard to" with "take into account". The provision whereby planning authorities must have regard to the development plans of adjoining planning authorities is appropriate. I hope I did not muddy the waters earlier. I do not propose to accept the amendment.

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