Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

It is natural, and should be the case, that many Deputies look back over the experience they gained, and what they saw and what happened, over the past number of years when they were members of local authorities.

I was elected in 2004. It was the end of the development process for the 2005-11 development plan for Dublin City Council, a process with which I was not familiar. It was alien to me, as a citizen, what that process was about. I looked at it and tried to gain experience in and knowledge of the matter at that end point of the plan coming into effect.

My first experience of the connection not only between the local authority officials and developers, but politicians right across the board - it was not only Fianna Fáil because other parties also were involved in this cosy relationship with developers - was when we were called to Crumlin village by the local area office which facilitated a meeting for a planner who was presenting a plan for that historic village in Dublin 12. The planner presented only a line of apartment blocks, six or seven storeys high, down along the village with a big square in the middle as an amenity for the community. It was not a practical plan. The planner himself admitted he had never been in Crumlin village and did not even know where it was before he drew up the plans, and that he was merely asked to produce a plan based on this. It became evident that this was a green light from the local authority to developers that this was the type of planning applications it was willing to take. This represented the acceptance of Dublin City Council for a certain type of planning in the area. Within a year, 24 planning applications were submitted for the Dublin 12 area, ranging from small area ones to grand schemes. We saw our petrol stations close and residents had to drive miles to fill their cars with petrol. We saw our manufacturing base close- Unilever, Lyons Tea and the car plant on the Naas Road. We nearly lost the Naas Road shopping area, the Phoenix development, as well. We saw our supermarkets being earmarked by developers. The Bailey brothers came in and bought out Superquinn. They were trying to sell them off, build apartments, go down to Bank of Ireland and build a monstrosity in the area. With the community involved in the area, it was totally out of context. Obviously, my experience is different from that of councillors in small towns in rural areas. That was the type of planning going on and it was driven by the development plan. That is really where I commend Deputy Catherine Murphy and her PA, Eoin, for putting this sort of work into trying to push forward the transparency of future conditions in local authorities in legislation.

The transparency must come from the development plans themselves and the amount of interaction with the communities. As I am sure the Minister of State, Deputy Jan O'Sullivan, would agree, a big wound has developed between the citizens of the State who were sidelined when all of this was going on and the local authorities. The developers could access planners; the citizens could not. For example, there had to be a special meeting and one could only ask certain questions, one could not query too much, one could raise a point, for instance, where there should be a park, an access point or a recess, or where it should be reduced 5 m in height, but one could not challenge the planning application. This is where that relationship must change.

How we plan our country and cities and communities comes from such development plans and these would put a check on developers coming in because they would know what they would have to deal with. They would know what they are allowed build in an area and all the compliances that must go with it, for example, proper fire safety checks. There were only three fire inspectors in Dublin city in 2010 to carry out all the fire safety checks and sign-off on the apartment blocks and buildings. It was outrageous. That should never have happened in the case of the buildings built in the city. That is where it starts, at the local area plans.

There were local area plans in Bluebell, Drimnagh, Walkinstown and other parts of the city but there was very little interaction between citizens and the local authority on them. Most likely, residents were presented with a plan and then would react stating that they were never involved in the process. There might have been a leaflet put through their door but residents did not take too much notice of it because it did not impact on them at that stage.

I remember the Bluebell area plan, which included building housing on Lansdowne Valley Park because it was the new way of having a view over the green areas to protect the areas etc. It was codswallop. They were talking about ten-storey or 12-storey blocks in the Bluebell community as well. The plan was rejected by the community. I remember asking for a moratorium to be put on the area plan and I was nearly torn apart by Fine Gael representatives there who asked how dare I have the cheek to-----

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