Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this Bill which has been a long time coming. Its history goes back to a long time before the publication of the Mahon report. There was the McCracken report and then the Flood report, which led to Mahon. They were established because of appalling corruption in the dealings between public representatives, planners and developers. As Deputy Ellis said, that did a great disservice to people, particularly those living at the edge of Dublin who had to live with the consequences. It also led to an abhorrence of the practice of the brown envelope. I remember the news reports of the evidence of gatherings in public houses at which councillors were met and given their envelope, with planning decisions being made as a result of these corrupt payments.

We need to remember the source of the legislative proposals we are discussing today, namely, the recommendations of the Mahon tribunal, but not all politicians behaved in this way and Deputy Joan Burton in my own party, who was a member of the county council at the time, vehemently fought against the corruption she saw all around her. Deputy Broughan also had personal experience of what was going on and he will speak later of that. It is a terrible indictment of public representatives that they behaved in this way. It was not only public representatives. Planning officials were also involved, as were developers who stood to gain a great deal. It is not a victimless crime and there are people for whom a shopping centre that was meant to be close by was put somewhere else because somebody paid people to vote for rezoning and changes in planning.

The background is grubby and unethical but, thankfully, it brought about a total change in how we approach these issues. There is legislation before us tonight but a series of legislative and other measures has been brought in by this House, including ethics legislation, legislation controlling political donations and legislation requiring lobbyists to register.

Thankfully, we now have a very different situation where there is much more transparency and where the possibility of corrupt behaviour for personal gain and greed has been taken away because of these various legislative and other measures, and that is to be welcomed. What we want is a planning system that serves the community and does not serve private interests.

Another measure that was taken was to get rid of developer-led plans. Previously, developers could submit planning proposals, not only individual plans but local area plans. I have to declare an interest because I was Minister of State at the then Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government with responsibility for planning for some of that period, including that particular measure, and I and other Ministers used powers under section 31 of the Planning and Development Act to stop proposed zonings because they were not in accord with good evidence-based planning and due to issues such as building on flood plains to which Deputy Martin Kenny referred. There were so many abuses in the past and to paraphrase somebody else, a lot has been done. We are doing one of the "more" things, so to speak, by bringing in this legislation to implement the main recommendations of the Mahon tribunal, as others have said, particularly the establishment of the office of the planning regulator.

Another measure is putting the national development plan, which I understand will now be called the national planning framework, on a statutory footing in order that it has the power and authority of statute. Planning needs to be evidence based, but it also needs to fit into a hierarchy, which is the term that is used, where we have the national spatial plan, regional plans, local authority plans, what are called core strategies in which local areas decide on their strategy and priorities and what they have to do to serve their population in terms of providing housing, schools, infrastructure and everything else a community needs, and local area plans. These all have to be part of a whole in order that we know what we are doing, why we are doing it in different areas, and people do not build something merely because it serves their own interests and that is not in accordance with proper planning.

Often planning does not get the central position it deserves in our national debates. We also need to ensure we have different kinds of plans. The Minister, Deputy Coveney, has housing plans. For example, we have capital plans. We need to make all these plans fit together and serve the purposes of the community. In this regard, I agree with my constituency colleague, Deputy Quinlivan, on having a balance in the country and not having everything happen on the east coast. We need to link up the parts of the country, and that is why the Limerick-Cork road is so important. It is about not having everything go into or come out of Dublin and having the rest of the country linked. That is important in terms of getting balanced regional development. That is my general view on the importance of these issues.

The Bill makes a number of provisions, the main one being the office of the planning regulator. It provides for the publication of submissions on local area plans and development plans on the websites of planning authorities. That is by way of providing the public with information with regard to the plans under which planning applications are made and under which other decisions are made with regard to the local area. The sending of notice to the relevant regional assembly of any proposed grants of planning permission which would constitute a material contravention of a development plan or local area plan is about having the hierarchy of plans fitting in with each other. The provision that the local authority development plan can regulate, restrict or control the location of new licensed premises is an innovative one. Underpinning in statute the concept of electronic planning allowing the introduction of online planning applications, appeals and payments is purely practical in terms of how the process works and the modern technology we have now.

Requiring planning authorities to provide data for databases on our national planning systems, as may be specified by the Minister, is about having the appropriate information that can provide the evidence for decisions that are appropriate and objective. I attended the briefing on the national planning framework which the Department provided recently, and one of the statistics arising was that the minimum projected population growth over the next 20 years is 500,000 people. Obviously, we have to plan for the future where our population will significantly increase, but we must do that in a way that avoids doing the kind of stupid things that happened previously whereby houses were built, with due respect to Deputy Martin Kenny, in some counties where there was no population to justify them, and yet in areas where there was a need, houses were not built. We now know where populations grow. We know where populations are and where they are likely to be in the future.

In my previous role as Minister for Education and Skills, the demographic information we had was very useful in planning schools several years ahead. We knew that there were a certain number of children already born in certain areas who would require a school. There has been much more integration with the local authorities in the planning of schools, for example, and this measure works in tandem to avoid a situation where a school is needed in an area in a year's time. We plan well ahead. Those kinds of relationships have been built up now between the Department of Education and Skills and local authorities, and that is a good development.

The other measures are around providing for the payment of reduced fees or no fees by elected members when making submissions on applications for planning permissions and the noting of such representation on the relevant planning file. The balance in that is important. Local authority members made the point that it is part of their job to have a view on these matters, but this provides that they do not merely have a word in the planner's ear. Those views are noted on the file in order that it is clear that they have been expressed.

I refer to the main issue, which is the planning regulator and the decisions with regard to the office of the planning regulator. I hold a different view from the one expressed by Deputy Eoin Ó Broin. I think the balance is correct. One is getting the balance between evidence-based planning and the democratic role of both local authority members and, in this case, the Minister. If the planning regulator were to make the final decision, there would not be accountability. We have often heard complaints that answers cannot be obtained in this Chamber from the National Transport Authority or the HSE. The decision, which the committee, when looking at these proposals, agreed with as well, was that the regulator would make the recommendation after an investigative process was completed but that the recommendation would then be given to the Minister, who would make the final decision and he or she would then be accountable. If the Minister were to make a decision that was different from the recommendation of the planning regulator, the Minister would have to explain why he or she was making a different decision. I hope I have understood that correctly. I think I have.

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