John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As far as the general thrust of the Bill is concerned I thought when I read it that parts of it should and could be considered, and now I understand that, contrary to what the previous speaker stated, it will be accepted. My attention was drawn to the section dealing with repeat offenders and ensuring a person's history with planning compliance is taken into account by planning authorities when deciding on future planning permission. Local authority officials will claim they do this already but I am not entirely convinced. People can change company names or put a company in the name of a family member. I am of the opinion it would not do any harm if a guideline or regulation in this regard was adopted by the Department and sent to local authorities. It is not the only section of the Bill which has merit in my opinion. I am glad the Government will accept it.

What is not in the Bill, and might in practical terms be impossible to include in it, is a provision to provide for additional scrutiny and comprehensive oversight of the individuals responsible for planning decisions in local authorities beyond the existing codes of conduct. I have experience in this area. For me it is still an extremely relevant issue, and something in which I became involved when I was a town councillor and local authority member in 1999 and I am still involved in it. Over the past 20 years there has been widespread disregard for the planning laws and regulations by planning staff and officials in Waterford County Council and other local authorities throughout the country. In Waterford County Council it had its origins in the 1970s, with officials in the engineering office doing drawings for the public while at the same time adjudicating on the actual planning permission for the same people. Some have stated they were only providing a service, and this might be so, but it has evolved into a cottage industry with officials and draftsmen operating in this manner for years. By the mid-1980s some of these individuals working in the local authority were randomly contacting members of the public informing them their quarry or business required planning permission and then offering to draw up the necessary plans for a fee which was often very substantial. The bonus was planning permission would be guaranteed. This behaviour continued for years with the same people doing very nicely providing this so-called service to the public. The enormous conflicts of interest which arose were by and large ignored by senior officials and local authority members not only in Waterford but throughout the country.

Getting away from Waterford County Council, when the Celtic tiger years hit we know in the case of a few individuals in local authorities throughout the country there was wholesale and large scale corruption. In some cases the individuals involved have been charged, files have been prepared for the DPP and there have been trials, but not too many officials have been convicted. The main problem which arose in the 1990s and early 2000s was that in some cases planners went from dealing with one-off housing to dealing with developments worth tens of millions of euro. In many cases the individuals involved were completely unsuited character-wise to be given this level of responsibility and power and this is the crux of it; too much power and control of wealth was in the hands of the wrong people without adequate oversight. It is worth reminding people that today the OECD stated it has serious concerns because Ireland has not prosecuted a single foreign bribery case in the 12 years since its foreign bribery clause came into force.

The alarm bells should have gone off when engineers who dealt with planning were openly doing nixers for private construction companies and the very same people were dealing with the companies' planning applications. This was my experience. For some reason the prevailing view among some senior local authority officials and Department officials was that public servants would never be tempted by bribes and were not susceptible to this type of corruption. We now know differently. We know some of them did take bribes and were corrupt. It probably did not help that the Garda Síochána was, until recently, completely ill-prepared to deal with this type of white-collar crime. This has improved slightly over the past ten years but it still leaves something to be desired.

As far as the Bill is concerned there are elements of it which should and, now I understand will, be accepted by the Government. My question for the Department officials and Ministers who police local authority officials is whether they have put in place the necessary safeguards at local level to prevent people who inherited positions of huge influence and power from acting contrary to the planning laws and the criminal code of the country. I am still not sure the answer is "Yes". One thing we can be sure of is the same temptations will arise again in the future.

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