Robert Troy (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)

I welcome this opportunity to speak on the important motion before the House. We all want to restore public confidence in our planning process. In doing so I acknowledge mistakes were made in the past and we have had the Mahon and Moriarty tribunals. For my part I am deeply ashamed and embarrassed of people associated with my party who were named in the reports. As my colleague, Deputy Calleary, stated swift and comprehensive action has been taken by the party to deal with this.

I want to follow on from a point made by Deputy Calleary. I will not be crucified for the sins of my father or my forefathers. I have a democratically elected mandate to be here as a Deputy for the constituency of Longford-Westmeath, and I am an Opposition spokesperson. It behoves all of us to hold the Government to account and the planning process is an extremely important issue on which we must hold the Government to account. Freedom of information requests have shown that despite what Ministers and backbenchers have stated, work had already started on establishing independent inquiries into the named counties. It is a pity that one of the first acts of the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government was to shelve it. I acknowledge that on foot of this debate being tabled the Minister of State, Deputy Jan O'Sullivan, who is in the Chamber, brought forward a list of 12 recommendations on what she will do.

Mistakes were made by members of all political parties and none and we need to learn from these mistakes. I want to concentrate on those who have really suffered because of the disastrous decisions, namely, those in communities left bereft of much needed facilities, those in unfinished housing estates, and the many small businesses in small towns suffering because bad planning allowed big supermarkets to develop on the far outskirts of towns and ripped the heart out of town centres. I am glad that Westmeath County Council, of which I was a member, fought tooth and nail to prevent a big multinational supermarket develop on the outskirts of a town which would have decimated the town centre. Small businesses find it difficult enough to survive in the recession without having to compete with huge businesses on the outskirts of towns.

The one benefit of county development plans is that democratically elected councillors have a say in them. When I stood in the local elections for the first time in 2004, one of the biggest issues in County Westmeath was the difficulty for people to build one-off rural houses. It is very important for the future sustainability of rural Ireland that we ensure people bred, born and reared in an area who will contribute to the local community and are entitled to build a house there can do so, and we did this in County Westmeath. As my colleague has said, it is only by allowing development in rural areas that we will have the people there to sustain the services, which, unfortunately, the Government seems determined to take away. It wants to close our one and two-teacher schools and our rural Garda stations, and impose septic tank charges. There is a raft of proposals representing a direct attack on rural areas.

We need to focus on how we can make a difference to the people who lost the most from the poor planning decisions, who are those without services in their communities and living in unfinished housing estates. One of the last things the former Government did was to allocate money to local authorities to help them move into unfinished housing estates and introduce critical safety measures in order to at least make the estates safe for the families living there. We should consider doing more of that. The management team from Longford County Council recently made a presentation to an Oireachtas committee on the works it has carried out in the past 18 months on which I commend it. The difference after those top class works was unbelievable. A small amount of money can make a big difference to the aesthetics and safety these housing estates, and more importantly to the people who are living there and paying big mortgages.

I have no hesitation in speaking on the matters about which I feel strongly. The time has come for Government Deputies to stop telling us we cannot afford to speak about what was done previously by members of our party. The 19 of us in this Chamber were democratically elected to serve our constituency and the country. We have offered and will continue to offer constructive opposition. We will hold the Government to account where we feel it needs to be held to account. We have offered meaningful solutions to the many problems people are facing on a daily basis.

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