Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There is no need for Deputy Stanley to get defensive. The Government was left to clear up the problem. Deputy Stanley will have an opportunity when summing up tomorrow night to condemn the people who built Priory Hall and who put unsuspecting home owners into a firetrap which was then left to this Government to take them out of. In his summing up, Deputy Stanley might also acknowledge some of the work the Government has done in undoing what was done by unscrupulous developers, not only connected to one Opposition party but to several.

The Minister has outlined the legislative proposal for a planning regulator. A planning regulator is important because not only will it provide a watchdog for elected members of local authorities and officials, development plans and zoning, but also for the implementation of those plans. Nobody should be above the law, regardless of their affiliations or otherwise. When one sees obvious planning discrepancies being left unchallenged by local authorities and reams of applications being made for retention that are put on a merry-go-round in some cases by local authorities, it begs the question as to what they are doing. One can walk into ghost estates in some parts of this country and wonder to oneself was there any planning authority supervising what was built. One can travel through towns where Georgian facades to buildings have been destroyed. Again, one wonders was there any planning authority in the area. Was it because the group of people involved in this particular element of building were above the law that they could get away with it?

I welcome the introduction of a planning regulator. However, it should be open to the citizen and third parties to draw attention to failings of local authorities to implement their own planning decisions.

We know of instances concerning Part 8 where planning applications granted by local authorities were not even completed, yet they will slap enforcement orders on people for simple, innocuous things. We have come from a difficult situation concerning a total lack of trust by citizens in the planning process and those who lived with the consequences in places such as Priory Hall. It is important for us to move on robustly and in this respect I welcome the commitment to establish a planning regulator.

I would like to draw attention to another group, however, and the Minister might share my view as he comes from a rural constituency. These are third-party, prescribed organisations that are unelected and accountable to nobody. People cannot join them even if they have a vested interest, but they seem to churn out observations to beat the band on planning applications that bear no resemblance to where they live. They are not from the area, yet in many cases they are destroying the economic viability of many projects.

The Minister will be well aware of a particular instance in my constituency recently. It concerned a project that hopefully will deliver 150 jobs to the Port of Foynes. The project went through a detailed environmental examination by the local authority and the local community broadly welcomed it. Yet, lo and behold, after planning permission was granted, third-party objectors, none of whom was local, landed in and appealed to An Bord Pleanála.

As the Minister comes from an area not too dissimilar to my own, I urge him to act in this regard. I have put up with this sort of baloney for the last 20 years, whereby a third-party organisation can destroy a person's right to live, work and rear a family in the country. As I also told the Minister's predecessor, the oxygen needs to be turned off for these people. If they want to continue treating people in rural areas as pariahs, they should not do it on the backs of taxpayers. It is about time that the revenue stream into that organisation was stopped once and for all.

I am sick of people interfering who are not resident in my county and do not know the local people or the fabric of the local community. The only time they were a part of rural Ireland was when they looked out the window and thought it was some sort of game reserve that should be visited at the weekend. Those people have done untold damage to rural communities. It is about time that someone in the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government took them on. I hope the Minister is the person to do so.

I have no problem with sustainable development or third-party objections, but I have a major difficulty with vexatious objections. The same people churn out this sort of palaver time after time because they want our rural communities to be maintained akin to the home counties in England, somewhere one visits at the weekend and then returns to the city on Sunday evening.

The Northern Ireland administration went down that road once upon a time, banning one-off rural housing. There is a group of people in Dublin 4, the leafy suburb set, who also want to do that in this jurisdiction. Up to now, they have gone unchallenged and unchecked by any government. It is about time somebody took them on and said, once and for all, they can put forward third-party objections, but to do so like everybody else, within the statutory time period.

We should not have a system where a person thinks he or she has obtained planning permission, yet the next day receive a letter from the local authority stating: "Congratulations, you've won a trip to An Bord Pleanála." A person could be stuck there for months and God only knows how long it would take to come out of it. In addition, there is no timeframe to deal with such matters.

We have seen objections to roads and other strategic infrastructure in the name of protecting snails, birds and others things. It has gone on long enough. Anybody currently looking at this country as a place to invest outside Dublin would say we have to take on the birds, bees and muesli brigade first before we will be able to create a job. This is happening in communities that were devastated by the actions of the previous Government. They lost their jobs and went to Australia or hung on for dear life in the hope that they might be able to sustain a future for their families.

If there is going to be proper planning legislation in this country it needs to take account of what communities like the one I represent want, not what the people in Merrion Row or Waterloo Road think they might want. The people who sent me, the Minister and other Deputies from rural constituencies here, expect the Government to take on unelected vested interests. They have destroyed rural communities for long enough. They have told us the type of house we can have, including height and location restrictions. This sort of thing has gone on for so long that people are frustrated. The public want accountability but they will not get it while a prescribed organisation, which is protected under the Planning Acts, can object on a wing and a prayer. It can thus destroy a person's right to live, work and rear their family in a rural community.

I welcome what the Minister said about vacant land. The towns the Minister represents, including Borrisokane, Borrisoleigh and Clonmel, are similar to towns in my constituency. There are concerns about vacant sites. I am glad the Minister specified urban areas, but I am concerned about the population threshold of such areas, although I know he will go for the right level.

I also welcome the steps concerning development levies. Local authorities have been bound by ridiculous legislation whereby they cannot vary development levies. Anything that will reduce such levies to a sustainable level, allowing jobs to be created in rural areas, is welcome.

I welcome the amended motion as this is an opportune time to talk about planning generally. The last national spatial strategy was a kind of "whatever you're having yourself" affair. It was a scatter-gun approach to planning with a bit for everybody involved with Fianna Fáil and the PDs at the time. This needs to be done on a proper, fair and accountable basis. It should not exclude constituencies like my own because we do not have a seat at the Cabinet table. I know the Minister will not do that.

I look forward to the legislation being published. I hope, however, that the Minister will take on the protected species who launch third-party objections because they have been around for long enough.

See this speech in context