Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I may not need the time and I thank the Deputy for that. This is significant legislation. I acknowledge the Minister's sincerity in terms of what he is trying to do with this Bill, notwithstanding areas where I have concerns or where Sinn Féin has outlined disagreement in the debate on the Bill in the Seanad. We accept what the Minister is trying to achieve in all aspects of the Bill. I also acknowledge the work of the officials at the pre-planning stage when they briefed Members and in their provision of additional information, which has been very useful in enabling us to understand fully the implications of the Bill.

The Bill provides for a very profound change, albeit a temporary change to the planning system. On that basis, and given the difficulties we have had with planning historically in this State, this legislation requires detailed scrutiny. Not unlike the Minister, many of my comments will be much more like Committee Stage comments, as I wanted to raise them on this Stage to assist in progressing the Bill in the timeline the Minister has outlined.

As the Minister said, some positive amendments were agreed during the debate in the Seanad, to which we will return, but it is disappointing there has not been more media interest in this debate. There have been various newspaper headlines during the past week or so about a former politician of this House potentially rejoining a political party of this House, which is of pretty much no consequence to anybody. This is serious legislation that seeks to deal with significant issues and it deserves more attention than just from those of us whose job it is to scrutinise the detail.

I support the Minister's desire to speed up the delivery of public and private housing. Whatever other disagreements we have over the housing policy agenda, this is one where we definitely want to work together, and I want to state that clearly. As I have been working my way through the Bill to understand it, my concern is that we cannot in the process of wanting to fix one problem, which is one of supply, create other difficulties, even unintended ones, as we go through this process. We do not want in any way to compromise good quality planning. I know that is not the Minister's intention but it is still one of the concerns of which we all need to be cognisant. We do not want to undermine the role, even on a temporary basis, of local elected members or of planning officials in local government. We need to be cognisant of the fact there are significant legal issues which are relevant to this Bill in terms of domestic, constitutional law, European law and international obligations. I will go through a few of the details because I have some questions to which I am keen to hear the Minister's response, if not at the end of Second Stage, then on Committee Stage when we come back to all these.

I am not saying any of this to be awkward. These are genuine questions and concerns I have in getting my head around the legislation. We have genuine concerns about a number of aspects of the Bill, and the Minister will know this because that was expressed by my colleagues in the Seanad. At the outset of this process when we agreed in committee to dispense with pre-legislative scrutiny to facilitate the Minister, I said that I was open to be convinced on all aspects of the Bill. I am still open to being convinced and I say that in all sincerity.

In terms of the substance of the legislation, I will start with Chapter 1. That was the subject of the lengthiest debate, particularly during the ten-hour marathon Committee Stage in the Seanad the other day. I watched all of it and reread sections of it before coming into the Chamber. For people who do not have it, the information that is being provided by the officials is key to understanding the problem and finding the correct solution. The average length of time is 81 weeks for those 15 planning applications, which is far too long in any set of circumstances. We need to have effective mechanisms to address those and to reduce that time.

I get the sense when I read the Bill, irrespective of whether it was the intention of the Parliamentary Counsel, that local authorities are carrying too much of the blame for the delay whereas, obviously, local authorities are only one part of that process. There are concerns about poor quality applications, lack of adequate information supplied by applicants at various stages in the process and poorly designed aspects of the planning process. This is not any reflection on the current Administration but more to do with how historically we have legislatively framed pre-planning in particular. There is also the length of time it takes even for board decisions to be made. On the basis of the information in the Bill, the board is the quickest element of the three pillars of pre-planning, council planning and board decisions. The board's functions are very specific and it has a much easier job to do in some respects than the local authority officials at an earlier point. Therefore, the 19 weeks on average for those 15 applications is probably too long.

I will move on to the specific concerns I have about this chapter of the Bill. I heard the Minister say repeatedly that it is not his intention and he does not believe the Bill is in any way undermining the role of councillors and local officials, but I do not agree.. Again, I am not questioning the Minister's sincerity in this. Local councillors, while having no formal role in a planning decision, bar making third party submissions, are key in the planning process in terms of the county development plan. There is a big shift when we move responsibility for taking a decision on an application from the local authority to An Bord Pleanála. The local authority planners must take into account the detail of a county or city development plan, whereas as we know, legislatively, An Bord Pleanála's relationship with the county or city development plan is different in that it must have regard to that. That creates a different relationship to that fundamental document in planning. I know there was a discussion on this with a number of councillors. The way in which the role of the local councillor is being undermined in this legislation means that the strength of the county development plan as the framework for underpinning planning decisions is weakened, irrespective of whether that is the intention of the Bill, and that is an issue.

Another issue is the lack of any non-judicial appeal. A fair and reasonable right to appeal a planning decision by a third party or by an applicant is not only right and a good feature of our planning system but something that is required under our obligations under the Aarhus Convention. In particular, there are clear obligations in Articles 5 to 8, inclusive. I would be interested to hear from the Minister, either later today or on Committee Stage, whether legal advice was sought on that particular issue and if the legal advice, or a summary of it, could be made available to us to allow us grapple with what are important issues in that regard.

I have a concern, and it is not a reflection on the quality of the staff in An Bord Pleanála. There would be at least ten local authorities to which this fast-track planning process would be expected to apply if it is introduced. We already see that not just big urban counties but also mid-sized rural counties have had applications of that size. We are probably talking about ten or more local authorities. There is a big difference between local authority planners who not only know their county development plan and associated policies but have been through the process of designing them, advising on them and so on, and the function of An Bord Pleanála staff.

I acknowledge the Minister keeps talking about how the planning section of the local authority has a consultative role in making submissions to the board but, in making the decision, the board's staff do not have the same depth of knowledge in respect of the specifics of policy or local conditions as professional planners in the local authorities, and that is a problem in terms of the quality of decisions. There is a huge volume of sifting through the detail of applications in the planning process at local authority level, both in the pre-planning stage and in requests for additional information during the planning stage. That is one of the reasons that stage of the process takes more time than An Bord Pleanála dealing with specific aspects of an appeal. I am not convinced that is adequately compensated for in the alternative arrangements in this section to reduce the time, and I am concerned about that.

My main concern with this section is that there was a better way of doing this. I do not have the experience of the Minister's officials and I was not on a local authority for a long period but ,according to the data the Minister supplied to us, the average time of the pre-planning stage in 15 applications was 33 weeks, the average time for the planning stage was 29 weeks and then it was 19 weeks with An Bord Pleanála. The longest stage is, therefore, is pre-planning and that is because there is not a tight enough statutory framework within which that stage of the process should take place. For example, if I submit a section 247 application to a local authority, I do not have to submit a detailed plan. I know from speaking to many managers that sometimes it is weeks before the more detailed plan is submitted. How can the planning, roads or housing departments of a local authority agree to, and properly inform themselves for, a pre-planning meeting if they have not even seen the plans? We could have had legislation that tightened all that up. There is no reason to fail to restrict pre-planning to six weeks, but that would have to be done legislatively for it be properly enforced.

The average time for processing the planning application is 29 weeks but when the time taken for the applicant to respond to requests for further information is sifted out as opposed to the time for the decision-making process, it is remarkable that the bulk of the delay is down to the time it takes the developer to respond. Of the seven long applications listed, in all cases almost half the time it took to process the application was in the hands of the developer. I understand that some of the requests for information are technical. They require certain types of surveys and there could be seasonal issues among other things, but either those issues should be identified in the pre-planning stage in order that they can be addressed before the application is submitted or developers and applicants are taking too long. They have up to six months, which is excessive. The Minister could have introduced legislative amendments to tighten that timeframe and shift some of the requests into the pre-planning stage, leading to much better outcomes. When the ten additional weeks that is added to that stage of the planning process is stripped out as a result of the time it takes applicants to respond with additional information, the time it takes the local authority to get through applications, according to the Minister's data, is the same as An Bord Pleanála. It works out at an average of 19 weeks.

An Bord Pleanála does not have to undertake the same work on an application as local authority planners and, therefore, there is no reason, as long as there is adequate staff, that it should take 19 weeks to decide appeals, some of which are taken on tightly defined sets of issues. I am not an expert on this and it is not an area on which I have the same knowledge as other areas of housing policy but I can identify an alternative 25-week process which would still allow the local authority to make the initial decision and allow for a fair and reasonable process of non-judicial appeal, which would achieve the same objective that the Minister is striving for. Perhaps I am naive and I do not understand the process properly, but this should have been examined more comprehensively.

Environmental impact screening is a good idea. I am convinced of the need for this both for applicants and for ensuring best quality protection of the environment. I have a number of concerns, however. There was not sufficient scrutiny of the sections in the Seanad. It took me a great deal of time to get my head around this. My first concern is that while there is a consultative element to what the Minister has designed, it distinguishes between organisations that are consulted before a decision is made from a list prescribed by the Minister of the day and other parties, whether that is members of the public or environmental non-governmental organisations, when a decision is made. The difficulty is those in the second tier of consultation will be consulted after the decision has been made, and I am not clear from reading the Bill what purpose that consultation has because there does not seem to be a procedure for altering the decision. Unless I am incorrect, the only third parties who have the right to take the issue to the board if they are unhappy with the decision are those who are involved in the first stage of the consultation process, that is, those who are invited to do so from the statutory list provided by the Minister. That creates a problem and undermines the State's obligations under the Aarhus Convention to ensure people have an opportunity to participate in the planning process. The Minister could have met those in ways that would not have required additional time. If there is legal advice on the implications of this both in terms of the EU's EIA directive 2011-2014 and relevant articles of the Aarhus Convention, I would interested in hearing it.

I have no difficulty with extensions to planning permissions in principle because that is sensible, but there is a small problem. There have been cases, including two in my constituency, which I will not name, where a developer who was phasing in a development did not complete a job in the first phase and then sought an extension of the permission for the second phase of the development. There are strong grounds for providing that third parties, whether they are local authority members or members of the public, should have the opportunity to engage in the process and to participate in consultation. There is a missed opportunity in this regard in the legislation and it could have been provided for without elongating the planning process. I urge the Minister to examine this. I will, however, table amendments in this regard.

I commend the Minister on the amendments to section 179, the Part VIII process, which I support. I have been through a number of controversial Part VIII applications and they were approved within six to eight weeks. There is no excuse in a housing crisis for county or city councillors to delay much-needed social housing, even when it is potentially controversial. My only disappointment with the section is these applications are not the primary problem in the process. We have had this discussion previously and I acknowledge a review is under way, as outlined in Rebuilding Ireland. The four-stage approval, tendering and procurement process is the big delay. I voted in favour of developments as a member of South Dublin County Council in October 2013 which still have not been built and which are still stuck in that process. The Minister is committed to making amendments in this area, but I made a relatively detailed submission to him and the Department and I had hoped he would address this in the legislation. Perhaps he has something for early next year in respect of amending that process. However, he keeps repeating to us that while there used to be an eight-stage process, it is now four stages. That is true but the four-stage process is still a problem. I urge changes in this regard either in this Bill or in new legislation early next year.

The amendments to sections 3 and 4 of the Residential Tenancies Acts in Part 3 are sensible and welcome, but there is another category of social housing tenants who do not have the same basket of rights as those of us in the private rented sector or those in the approved housing bodies, AHB, sector have, which is renters from the State. It makes no sense whatsoever that social housing tenants in local authority properties do not have access and recourse to the same mechanisms.

The Minister probably did not have time to think about that in the context of this Bill. I urge him to return to this issue at some point next year so all rental tenants - local authority, social rental, approved housing body and those of us in the private sector - will have the same set of rights and protections. My suspicion as to the reason why local authority tenants are not included under the terms of the Residential Tenancies Act is because it would open up a can of worms in terms of some of the issues of quality of accommodation in various parts of the country. That is not a criticism of the current Minister. It would also give tenants in local authority properties access to the RTB in disputes with their landlord, which, essentially, is the State.

The Minister knows my view on the Tyrrelstown amendment. We have discussed it before. The problem with the threshold of 20 - I will come to the issue of the five in a moment - is that it means the vast majority of people who are currently at risk of homelessness or who are in emergency accommodation because they were made homeless as a result of a property being repossessed by a bank and the landlord giving notice to quit will get no additional protections. The Minister is introducing an amendment to strengthen the rights of some tenants but the vast majority of people who need this protection will get no additional protection either under the initial proposal or under the reduction to five. The Minister knows that landlords who own 20 properties or more represent approximately 0.56% of landlords and 15% of tenancies. It would be great for those people but the other 85% or so will be left out. Even though it is good that the threshold of 20 is being reduced to five, it is still-----

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