Séamus Kirk (Louth, Fianna Fail)

-----and to grant planning permission for development. Any of these decisions taken in isolation may seem fine but if they are to fit into a particular development framework in a county, a local authority area or a town council area, the elements that need to be considered are what constitutes good planning and this is when the difficulties arise.

The core of the problem is that once the asset value of land is changed from agricultural to developmental use, then the decision, whether under section 4 or section 140 or a decision to be taken by the membership of the council when reviewing the county development plan, will inevitably result in trouble.

I hope we can learn from the experience of the past 20 years so that in the future we will have a decision-making process to deal with these issues and which will strike a reasonable balance between the obligations of the public representative on one hand and what constitutes good planning on the other hand. However, we must learn from the mistakes of the past. If there were irregularities in six or seven local authorities in this instance - I am not immediately familiar with any of them - or varying degrees of irregularities, these need to be examined and there must be openness and transparency. We must tell the world and its wife exactly what went on in these places.

When the Minister comes to review this general area, he must be able to learn from the bad experiences of the past in order to ensure that we avoid those pitfalls in the future.

See this speech in context