Joanna Tuffy (Dublin Mid West, Labour)

That party should defend democracy and not try to paint everybody with the same brush, because that serves Fianna Fáil badly and does not help to protect democracy.

The planning issue that has not been highlighted either by the United Left Alliance or Sinn Féin is that some people can still become very rich from rezoning decisions. If that aspect of planning is not addressed it will happen in future as well. In order to address that matter, the Kenny report needs to be implemented. If that were done, when land is rezoned for residential and other developments local authorities could purchase it for its agricultural value plus 25%. That is what was recommended in 1973 by the Kenny report and it is required now. If it had been done earlier, we would have a very different landscape both politically and in terms of the developments that have occurred.

I have already criticised one proposal in the Mahon report. On the one hand, it found that planning powers have been too centralised in the hands of the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, while the same paragraph recommends that those powers should be handed over lock, stock and barrel to an independent planning regulator. The report goes further in handing that regulator even more powers, including what I would consider to be legislative ones.

We know from our history and from recent findings in the reports of tribunals, that unelected officials are just as capable of having corrupt officials among them. There is an idea that an elected official is worse but at least an elected official is accountable to the electorate. People should be held accountable at the ballot box for democratic decisions. It is important that planning powers remain in elected hands and that local communities have a say in what is done in their areas. Local people have something to say on matters that affect them.

I also wish to criticise the response by An Taisce to the Mahon tribunal report. An Taisce's instincts are - like the Green Party's - profoundly anti-democratic. An Taisce proposed, for example, a reduction in the number of planning authorities and, instead, a further centralising of planning decisions. One aspect of the wrong planning decisions that were taken in the Dublin County Council area in the period covered by the Mahon tribunal report was that councillors from Swords were making planning decisions about Tallaght. They could then hide behind the fact that they were not local councillors and could never be held accountable by the local electorate. We should therefore not centralise planning any further. We need to retain local democracy and strengthen it, as well as making it more participative.

The motion before us does not serve the kind of debate we need to have on planning. It is a knee-jerk reaction which says, "Let's spread the blame as widely as possible" and "Let's make outrage about everything". Instead, however, we should be asking why particular things were done and why they happened. To that end, the Kenny report needs to be implemented.

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