Maurice Quinlivan (Limerick City, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Sinn Féin welcomes this legislation as it places the national planning framework on a statutory footing. The legislation is one of the outcomes of the Mahon tribunal which in itself was set up as a result of huge public disquiet, political instability and charges of corruption, criminality, brown envelopes and shady deals. The physical manifestation of that is found in every village, town and city across the country. Ghost estate sprawl, poor architecture, badly designed public realm and huge infrastructure deficits are the hallmarks of that era. The purpose of the legislation is to ensure that untrammelled, corrupt and vulgar development on such a scale never happens again.

The Mahon tribunal shed a light on the dysfunctionality at the heart of the Irish political system and the failure and startling inability of the institutional machinery of the State to protect ordinary people from corrupt and greedy political elite and officials. The lust and insatiable appetite for money pushed the price of land and housing into a different sphere and out of the reach of ordinary people, and city and county councils. A house became a commodity to be bought and sold to the highest bidder like any other product on the open market, with the sole aim of maximising profit. The idea that a house was not just a place for living in but a home with sentimental ties to family, which marked it apart, was all but ignored.

If we fast forward to 2016, we find ourselves in a shocking and shameful situation in that we cannot house large numbers of our people and young children spend the important formative years of their lives going to schools from cheap, cramped hotel rooms. This same society places no value on public housing. In the event that some units are to be built, the dominant discourse is about limiting the numbers, integration, and basically limiting the impact of housing.

Long gone from both official and public discourse is the notion of public housing as a social good and a key component of the State's duty to house people. The main function of the new office of the planning regulator is to evaluate and assess local authority development plans, local area plans and regional, spatial and economic strategies during their development. I welcome this important provision in the Bill. I hope that the establishment of this office signals a clear departure from the corruption and greed of the past and that from now on, public interest and common good will take precedence over all issues, particularly over profit.

I want to briefly mention the national spatial strategy, which the Mahon tribunal recommended be put on a statutory footing. As the Sinn Féin spokesperson for jobs, enterprise and innovation, I am confronted on a daily basis with the failure of successive Governments to plan for the long-term economic, social and infrastructural development of the country. Nowhere is that more evident that in Limerick, where we do not have a Limerick to Cork motorway, and no plans for one.

We are now in a situation where the spatial and economic development of Dublin and the greater Dublin region is speeding ahead while the rest of the country languishes in a sort of economic limbo and is powerless to stop its decline. Uneven economic and spatial development has resulted in the overdevelopment of the Dublin region at the expense of the under-development of the rest of the country. There is an onus on all of us to face up to that fact, and to address it. My hope is that the new planning framework and the office of the planning regulator will mark the end of past practices which served only the corrupt and the greedy. We have truly crossed the Rubicon in terms of planning at all levels.

Our task in the future must be sustainable development, grounded in good planning practices, that has the interest of ordinary people and communities at its core. That philosophy must be the guiding principle at local, national and regional levels. We cannot sort out local issues without also addressing regional imbalances, and we cannot deal with national problems unless local areas feel a genuine connection to national decision making policies.

I wish the office of the planning regulator well. This Bill is important, but it is only a first step in the momentous task of ensuring that Ireland has a planning system and culture fit for a 21st century country that likes to think of itself as a republic.

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