Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Good man. Go raibh maith agat. It is very difficult to keep out of trouble all the time - one can sometimes wander. We appreciate the help and guidance of the Ceann Comhairle.

I dealt with a business in Tipperary town which employed 30 people and leased a yard. The lease was being withdrawn because the owners of the yard wanted it back. The business identified a site on the Limerick road in Tipperary town and wanted to lease it and keep the jobs in the town. However, I could not get a planning meeting for weeks and the planners refused to visit the site to see what was involved. There is nothing better than being on a site, seeing the traffic flows and identifying the issues that arise. Eventually, a meeting was held in the council buildings. While the business development officer and others were trying to keep the business going, the planners seemed to be on a different planet and did not want to engage. When they did engage, it took ages to get back and the business owner was phoning me to say he had to consider other locations. Then, the planners came back with a negative answer - "Níl" button was on and it was stuck in "Níl". We have a new button here, "Staon". We can abstain, and perhaps then press the green button and change to "Tá". However, the "Níl" button was on in this instance. The planners would not go and meet the business owner. It would take a variation of planning, given that, as we were told, the area was zoned for retail. There are acres of retail space in Tipperary town, and in most other towns and villages, which are not being used. The planners said the council would probably not support it and could object. The business had to move 16 or 17 miles to another town. Thankfully, it stayed in County Tipperary and did not go to some other county. What happened was due to lack of interest, understanding and empathy with the difficulties of keeping the business afloat, paying the wages and dealing with the trucks and staff. It is a logistics business. There was no empathy from the planners. It was a lethargic effort in a jobs black spot in Tipperary town with no supports.

I am disappointed that the Bill does not deal with revitalising our town centres and villages. There is a small mention of little things, as there is in the budget. I proposed that we change Tipperary's county development plan to deal with shops that have been closed for five or ten years, of which there are many in all the towns in Tipperary and in the towns in the Minister of State's constituency. I previously proposed that it be made easier and quicker to change the use of such a premises without being faced with a planner and without huge charges being applied. If we rejuvenate town centres, we will bring life back into them and bring people back to living in them and we will deal with the 3,000 approved housing applicants in Tipperary waiting for houses, never mind the countless thousands of people who have not even been approved. We would have living town centres. At the Government formation talks, I proposed that property owners, or those who buy or lease a property, would get the VAT back on what they spend in changing a property's use. I did not ask for money for developers or bankers or anybody else, just a straight return of the VAT, as is the case with regard to the home improvement scheme. It did not happen and it is not happening in the Bill.

We all get lip-service and talk about the Planning and Development (Amendment) Act and how we are going to revitalise our towns. We are not. We could crack two nuts with the one sledgehammer. We would provide accommodation units and bring life back into our towns. O'Connell Street in Clonmel, which used to be a thriving town, has been destroyed by all the out-of-town developments. There are only two units occupied over premises in the town, never mind all the shops that have closed down. The same has happened in Tipperary town, Carrick-on-Suir, Cahir, Clogheen, you name it. Villages such as Ardfinnan are all being devastated. This would be a way of reducing housing lists, dealing with the homeless crisis - we could use the voluntary sector if it is needed - and revitalising the towns. Towns would be living. People would be there at night and the towns would not become ghost towns at 6.05 p.m. after the shops close and everybody has gone home. It did not happen and there is no sign of it. Where has the imagination gone? Where is the vision to do this and deal with the problem? We do not need a Mahon tribunal to give us a recommendation or regulation. We need joined-up thinking, but it is not there.

The other issue we are not dealing with is the planning charges. There are gravy trains for the councils, county managers and finance officers. They have fancy names now; the finance officer is now known as director of services for finance. The previous Government - which the Minister of State voted for - abolished the town and urban councils. The town of Clonmel had a budget of €15.1 million. Now, it has diddly-squat. The enabling document for it was called Putting People First, yet the Government took away the services from the people and shut down democracy. The Minister of State's former colleague, Phil Hogan, did this. I will meet him tomorrow at the meeting of the Joint Committee on European Unions Affairs, and I look forward to a robust engagement with him. Now an esteemed European Commissioner, Phil Hogan devastated democracy and bulldozed Tipperary together. As a result of what he did, the Minister of State has to canvass a big part of Tipperary and there is a constituency in Offaly. He just bulldozed them. It was arrogance and ignorance. There are not enough adjectives to describe the actions. Again, we are left without any source of funding.

The gravy train of charges was okay during the boom times, if such charges were ever okay. I voted for them in my county and I voted for the community charge, which came to good effect with playgrounds, halls and crèches being built with assistance from it. Now, eight years into the recession, why can we not see that they are too high and are prohibitive? A man came to me in Clonmel six months ago. His business had closed and he wanted to turn his premises into five apartments. Again, this would solve accommodation for five families. His bankers and accountant told him he was bonkers, particularly as 48% was going to go on change-of-use charges, planning fees and development charges.

It would have been off the wall and he could never have made it viable. Even leasing it for ten or 20 years would not have repaid the loan, so another project was abandoned. The Bill misses that completely. It offers no recommendations, directions or guidelines to councils to start viewing the gravy train of fees as a negative for building and development. It is the same for a young couple trying to build a house. It depends on whether people can get a planning meeting and planning permission. They cannot see planners with me or any other public representative. I do not know why such regulations have been made.

Many recommendations of the tribunal have not been implemented. The tribunal was a sham, full stop. We should not even be discussing this legislation four, five or six years later, a Bill that is meant, mar dhea, to implement some of the planning tribunal's recommendations, because that tribunal was farcical and like a long-running soap opera. Afterwards, we decided to set up more tribunals. We will have tribunals in 20 years' time to examine the standards that we are forcing on people now. We are setting up this and that body. This is quangoland. The Bill is weak on decisions and definite actions.

As to local public representatives and fast-tracking, I warned people at the committee. We must be careful because we are in a democracy and the planning process must be public and transparent. There must be public notices in newspapers, files must be available and everyone is entitled to make observations. We cannot stop this because there have been devastating effects in my county, where there are up to 60 unfinished estates waiting and no funds to finish them. I lay much of the blame with the planners. They gave planning permission for large estates but, when those were half built, people came forward with plans to build more. There was no enforcement whatsoever. If I built a dog house without permission, officers could enforce the regulations, but they could not enforce these permissions. They were oblivious.

I have held meeting after meeting with planners, enforcement officers and residents in Tipperary town, Cahir, Clonmel, Carrick-on-Suir and so on where people have been left in appalling conditions - unfinished footpaths, holes in roads, unfinished surfaces and, above all, no lighting. We will head into old time in a week or ten days when there will be darkness from 5 p.m. People talk about security, health and safety, but there are health and safety issues everywhere and the council is just rubbing its hands. When asked why the regulations were not enforced, it says that it could not and cannot do so now because the builders are broke, in liquidation or in NAMA or it cannot speak with them because it is dealing with the receivers. This is disgraceful. People invested and bought houses off of plans for pristine, finished estates with crèches, playgrounds and everything else, but what have they now? Ramshackle estates like one would see in Third World countries with holes, water, no public lighting, no proper sewerage systems, collapsed attenuation ponds and hoarding around them to stop children from falling in and drowning. It is a nightmare from morning until night and the planners are rubbing their hands and saying that they can do nothing about it. The enforcement laws existed and should have been enforced.

The bonds were ridiculous. That issue is not addressed in this legislation. The Minister is back. Trying to call in a bond is nigh impossible. The Minister knows that. There is no real effort being made in this legislation to deal with the issue of outstanding bonds. Some of the developers are in the Congo, Hong Kong or America and their bonds cannot be called in, yet the unfortunate people who worked hard to earn their deposits and got loans are repaying their debts. Many of them are in negative equity. They are living in hellholes of estates without even stop signs or children-at-play signs or a public light. It is disgraceful. I am referring to the fast-tracking of more than 100,000 houses. They are the people who caused all of the problems, but we are going to fast-track the houses. There is nothing in the Bill to stop this from recurring.

While I can be critical of how slow the planning process is, the ordinary citizen is entitled. It is the same up and down the country with EirGrid and overhead power lines for the North-South interconnector and wind turbines. It is the same carry on. Communities are being ridden over roughshod.

I am disappointed that there is nothing in the Bill to stop a retired official or an official who leaves early from joining a planning company. This happened recently in our area in the middle of the EirGrid battle when a senior member of An Bord Pleanála was appointed chairman of EirGrid. That sends out desperate signals. He might be the most honest man in the country, but he has influence. He knows the pitfalls and how to get around An Bord Pleanála. How it happened was disgusting, but that is happening all of the time. The greatest evidence of this was in Irish Water, which had three or four retired county managers as well as others. Some did not leave a blaze of glory behind in the areas from which they came. I could name them. They were pushed into Irish Water. Thank God that they are being weeded out. There were some good ones in there as well. There must be strict legislation. There should be at least five years of a buffer between leaving a planning office or a State board, for example, An Bord Pleanála, and getting a top job in a semi-private company like EirGrid. There has to be. There is too much temptation.

We gave the Mahon tribunal a long time, it has been four years or longer since we received its report and it had a cost, but here we are doing this. What about the basic issues? People can have no trust or faith in the process. We are not dealing with that situation in this legislation. We should have dealt with it. It sends out the wrong message and only proves what people know, namely, if one is a big business, one can do what one likes.

It is the same in my county, east Cork, west Waterford and south Kilkenny with large racing conglomerates. They have done a great job with the racing and are buying up every perch of land. They are buying houses, cottages and everything else and doing them up. That is the power of money. They bring bulldozers in the next day without any planning application and transform the place. The Minister should have dealt with this because we have major issues with development on flood plains. A fellow rang me today. He was looking for a house in a rural parish. He was told by the planners that it was on a flood plain, but if it got flooded, we would all be on the ark. The 100-year flood plans are there. They have to be brought in now. The guidelines for these are not published. When are they going to be published so that we will know about the flood plains? Insurance companies are using them as an excuse not to insure. We were told two years ago that flood plain risk assessments would be published, but they have not been.

The changes in land use, demographics, the removal of fences and the demolition of drainage should be covered by this Bill. If one puts a bulldozer in a field, one will lose natural drainage. This has an impact on flooding, making it worse because water travels and many of those fences were carefully constructed, but they are being blown out of it by the power of money and machinery.

There are many weaknesses in the legislation. We should make haste slowly to address many of the issues that the Minister has examined. He is bringing us to somewhere in Dublin in the next day or so to look at an estate.

I mentioned career people hopping from State bodies to local authorities to An Bord Pleanála and back. An Bord Pleanála is transparent and above reproach, we are told, but countless times an inspector's report has been overturned by the board. The Minister has seen it happen. I have seen it happen. An Bord Pleanála is paying the inspector. The inspector is supposed to be a qualified person. I know some of them and they are. When an inspector makes an honest report, it is rubbished. It is not expedient enough and is overruled by the board. We need a great deal more insight into that so as to ensure a more transparent process in dealing with issues.

The costs cannot be prohibitive either. I know there is NIMBYism about many issues, but we must separate the wheat from the chaff and ensure that making legitimate submissions is not prohibitive and local communities are listened to. They are not being listened to concerning wind farms and pylons. EirGrid did not consult the community. It came in top heavy and bulldozed. We need a greater response from planning authorities and An Bord Pleanála to deal with issues of that magnitude.

The big bugbear is money and greed, or even big money and big greed. Farmers, who are currently hard-pressed, are offered so much per year per pylon on their land. It is an attitude of divide and conquer from these companies, with expertise, mar dhea, brought in from other countries. These are projects that have failed in other countries in the past 25 years but we are looking at them as if they are a new and great idea that has just arrived.

I thank the Acting Chairman for his forbearance. There are many shortcomings in the Bill. It cannot all be about the Mahon tribunal but it is meant to put clothes on the Mahon skeleton. It has not done so. It is meant to facilitate the fast-tracking of some developments and achieve some transparency. That has not been happening. It is the ordinary cottier, the man and woman building a house, who must go through planning hoops. They are easy prey. There are many good developers but it is the rogue fellows that left abominable messes that cannot be touched. We have challenged the authorities at meetings and they have told us they were too busy, there was not enough enforcement, this or that. The bonds were ridiculous and the bonds they could put in place cannot be retrieved.

Surely to God we should get more legal advice on this. We have legal advice in every county council in the country that is very well paid. There is a letter written to a farmer about a patch of land or a road and the legal advisers get a good stipend from it. We are getting very poor value for buck for the public with these planning issues and enforcement. These authorities can make sure an ordinary person has built a pier at an entrance that he or she was supposed to - we want safety above anything else - but they ignore the big developers.

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