Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent)

This final report of the Mahon tribunal is lengthy. I doubt if any Member of the House has read it in full, myself included, although I have read a sizeable portion of it. In my view, the recommendations do not go to the heart of the problem in terms of their requiring reform of the system. I believe the current system needs to be changed. For example, it is safe to conclude that had the Kenny report been implemented we would not be debating the Mahon report nor would we be in the depth of economic crisis.

Prior to establishment of the Mahon tribunal to investigate planning corruption in the Dublin region, a £10,000 reward was offered by Colm McEochaigh and Michael Smith for information about corruption. This happened at a time when there was widespread media debate about the practices of the old Dublin County Council, in particular. Citizens in Dublin were often shocked by the decisions the council made and disgusted by the way those decisions were made. Those who proposed that an area be rezoned were often from the opposite side of the county to the location that would be affected. Therefore, there was no direct opportunity for the people of the area to do anything about the proposer at the next local election. The planning system and democracy itself were corrupted. Locations in west Dublin that are contiguous to the area I represent became absolute battlegrounds. Some of them, such as Laraghcon, are within or close to the Liffey Valley area.

Many people are talking about the shock they feel following the publication of the Mahon report. However, I am surprised that anyone could be shocked by the report. I am disgusted, but I am not shocked. I am disgusted that a tribunal was required. I am disgusted that it cost so much money. I am disgusted that it is being portrayed as a question of a few bad apples, rather than as a question of systemic failure and endemic political corruption, particularly within the Fianna Fáil Party. One has to ask why a tribunal of inquiry was necessary. What does it say about our legal system which failed so spectacularly to investigate and prosecute corruption? The same planning system that allowed such corrupt practices to take place in Dublin existed and continues to exist in the rest of the country. Anyone who thinks this type of abuse was not widespread is not living in the real world. It might be happening on a smaller scale, particularly in areas that are under less development pressure.

During most of the 1990s, the planning system lacked any strategic focus. Development plans were a nightmare, with landowners and their agents doing endless rounds of lobbying. People knocked on my door at 7 o'clock in the morning and at 11 o'clock at night. Anyone who has participated in the development plan process will be familiar with that. I never felt under any pressure because I did not feel I had an obligation to any land owner. I was elected to Kildare County Council in 1991. Part of the reason I stood for election was that I could not understand how we could keep building more and more houses without seriously considering where children would go to school and how community or recreational facilities could be provided. I did not understand why the development was so one-dimensional, when our communities are multidimensional. At the time, development was not about building communities - it was about building houses and building fortunes.

It amazed me that the Civil War parties seemed to be very united when it came to rezoning land. That is clear when one looks at the numbers. It was not about where the land was located. It did not matter if the land had previously flooded. It was not about the amount of land that was required, or predicted to be required. It was usually about who owned the land. The system was designed to act in the interest of making millionaires of the preferred landowners. The question was how one could become one of the lucky preferred landowners. No windfall tax was applied to such transactions to pay for infrastructure. Instead, in 1997 the then Minister for Finance, Charlie McCreevy, cut capital gains tax in half. This was designed to fuel the demand for rezoned land. There was no connection between land use and transportation planning. When the DTO produced development scenarios for the greater Dublin area, we got was the worst case scenario. The dispersed pattern of settlement that resulted has made the delivery of sustainable public transport unobtainable. The same situation arises in relation to the delivery of sanitary services, particularly if we are to comply with European Union laws. Money has had to be diverted from health, education and social protection, or raised through additional taxation, potentially including water metering. The cost of the tribunal is the tip of the iceberg.

During the Kildare development plan process in the mid-1990s, I demanded that a strategy for development be included as a central part of the development plan. The then Department of the Environment - initially through Deputy Howlin and later through Noel Dempsey - agreed and such a strategy was subsequently included. This approach was heavily resisted by senior administrative council officials and most councillors. It involved quantifying the amount of land that had already been zoned and estimating the housing need, etc. It was basic stuff. It had the effect of reducing the rezoning orgy. Since then, the regional planning guidelines and the national spatial strategy have been produced. Unfortunately, the opportunity presented by the strategy was misused when efforts were made to give every Minister a hub, a spoke or a gateway. It needs to be revisited.

Those of us who dared to question the prevailing approach to planning, including representatives of community groups, were depicted as being anti-development and told to make sure the last person to leave switched off the lights. We were labelled as NIMBYs who did not know how the system worked. In most cases, all we were doing was trying to curb the worst excesses or demand a rationale for what was happening. A former Independent councillor in County Kildare, Tony McEvoy, took successful court actions, including in the High Court, at considerable risk to himself. He was one of two Independent councillors who were elected in the county on a "planning alliance" platform in 1999. That alliance existed because of the disquiet about what was happening.

Throughout the Mahon report, there is an emphasis on elected officials as the only people who might corrupt the system. However, many of the battles we had were with senior administrative officials. In some cases, it was difficult to rationalise the positions they took. When An Bord Pleanála made its decision on an eight-storey car park and apartment complex on Main Street in Leixlip, where the dominant building height is two storeys, one of its officials stated:

I find it extraordinary that it took the planning authority almost five years to refuse the proposal...certain officials of the planning authority assisted the developer's agent in redesigning the proposal during the assessment stages of the application. The proposed development shows...a brazen lack of consideration for the residents.

Transparency is constantly highlighted as a requirement by the Mahon report. I agree with that. In my experience, some practices, such as the use of non-statutory plans like masterplans or area action plans, are misused to give cover for decisions made. They lack transparency. Laws around their use need to be strengthened to ensure transparency. Indeed, I believe they need to be placed on a statutory basis. Last year, An Bord Pleanála finally put paid to a development on lands adjacent to Castletown House in Celbridge. The development involved nine blocks of up to seven storeys, mostly of apartments on a protected demesne in the Liffey Valley. The process in this case was far less than transparent and satisfactory. This was furiously fought by community groups for the guts of a decade. The land was zoned in the early part of the new millennium, with only a handful of councillors including myself resisting it.

Sustaining one's involvement in the political system is predicated on having sufficient funding to fight elections. Those of us who competed against people who had five, six or ten times as much money were always at a disadvantage. I welcome the recommendation that real-time information should be available so conflicts of interest can be gauged by the electorate. The recommendation on electing regional authorities is essential. We need to go much further, however. We need radical reform of our local government system. It should include the phasing-out of the county council system, as I have said previously. We should reduce the number of regional authorities. I absolutely agree that they must be democratically elected. A new tier of district council, with a primary role of place-shaping, should be established. That would build on the successes at community level, tap into what makes us successful as a people and regenerate our local government system.

I have listened to many of those who have commented inside and outside the House. Many speakers have said we need new young politicians. That is supposed to be the answer. People inside and outside this House acted ethically and properly in the planning process. I want to say that applies across the spectrum. I do not believe it is an issue of age. It is a question of acting in the public interest, having a civic morality, and being a democrat. There needs to be a route for investigations. Six areas have already been designated as requiring scrutiny. I believe that other complaints which have been made require answers as well. This report will be repeated unless we create a mechanism whereby such investigations can happen. That needs to happen as an absolute matter of urgency.

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