Thomas Pringle (Donegal South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate. I congratulate Deputy Catherine Murphy and her team on putting together this Bill and bringing it to the floor of the House for debate in the next two nights.

This is an important Bill. There have been indications that the Government is not opposing it and that is a welcome step. If that is the case, I commend the Minister.

This legislation will be important in bringing transparency, accountability and protection of citizens into the planning code. For too long planning permission and the planning code have been the domain of developers who have driven development plans at local level across the country. Such plans have been developer-led rather than community or citizen-led and have taken into account the best needs of developers rather than those of communities. The transparency, accountability and public scrutiny provided for in this Bill will go some way towards making developers more accountable and responsible for the decisions and permissions in which they have been involved. It will also force local authorities to be more proactive in dealing with developers who may have a large number of enforcement proceedings against them or developers who have not paid development contributions. That is important because we need to give the planning authorities a push in that direction. From my experience of dealing with planning matters during the time I served as a county councillor, I am aware that it has been very difficult to getting planning approval. The planners have pointed out that the legislation does not always assist in that way.

It has been very difficult to make developers accountable for bad developments and to pursue them in respect of bad decisions. The planning system seems to facilitate them in doing this. I have often thought that if one has the brass and money, one can railroad one's way through the planning system. All one has to do is ignore the local authority and sit it out. It is mainly developers who have the brass neck to do that. Most citizens would be too worried about the implications for themselves if they were to do that. In effect, people get away with it because the enforcement system is too cumbersome, too slow and it is a complete waste of time. The local authority will spend months, and perhaps up to a year, trying to get a developer to deal with an enforcement notice, then it will decide to go to court and it will take time to get the case to court and when it goes to court numerous adjournments will be granted by the judge because the developer will come on site and do a little bit of work and tell the court that he is dealing with the matter and the court will adjourn the case. At the end of the process a few years later the court might decide to fine the developer a few hundred euro and that is the end of the process, but the process will start again when the developer does not comply with conditions attaching to the planning permission. That is the system under which people have to labour, including many people living in unfinished multiple developments who have tried to ensure that developers are held to account for shoddy workmanship.

The legislation helps to enshrine the Aarhus Convention into the planning system and that is vitally important. That convention sets out that members of the public have a right to participate in a range of decisions where they may have an environmental impact and that includes planning matters. We need to provide for that and to put citizens to the forefront and allow them to participate fully in the system. The Bill outlines a number of ways that can be done, namely, through the national compliance register and a national register for development contributions and, importantly, there is an onus on local authorities when they receive a planning application to search the national compliance register. We have seen in the past where developers will move from county to county to avoid being held up for having poor quality permissions completed. That is an important requirement. We must send the message to local authorities that they must refuse permissions to developers who have been problematic in the past in their own counties and in other planning areas and make them access the courts if they want to obtain planning permission. That is the only way we can send a clear and strong message in this respect.

I welcome a number of other provisions in the Bill. There are one or two measures I would like included in it that could be considered at a later point, particularly in regard to section 5 of the 2000 Act where a developer can seek a declaration as to whether a proposed development would require planning permission. That needs to be opened to allow third parties who may have concerns in that respect to take part also in the process.

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