Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I do not accept the Government's argument that establishing a genuinely independent regulator is somehow taking away the democratic imperative for people elected and accountable, as public representatives are, around policy and legislation. It is not what is being proposed. The point is to have some sort of genuinely independent checks and balances on that. The Minister and the Government cannot act as the ultimate watchdog of themselves so we need a fully independent regulator that will ensure we are fully compliant. Earlier we heard how some of us, at least, believe we are not compliant with the environmental impact assessment directive and have flagrantly failed to engage in genuinely sustainable development in every sense of that word, so we need somebody who will independently oversee these matters and adjudicate on them if people are not doing what they should be, playing by the rules or failing to vindicate legislation or environmental directives, etc.

I have a question for Deputies Daly and Wallace, and Deputy Wallace alluded to it. Who regulates the regulator and who would appoint the regulator? It is a problem as we have the phenomenon of regulators who are not really regulators but rather rubber-stampers. We must deal with that issue as well and a number of aspects must be addressed. The Public Appointments Service must be examined as to whom are its personnel accountable when it comes to important public appointments? They seem to me like a group of insiders and very much the permanent government, selecting its own people. I am sure most of the public do not really know who is in the Public Appointments Service, never mind the top level appointments committee and all that stuff. That process should be examined as it must be much more open and transparent.

We need to establish a much greater role for the stakeholder groups of civil society, communities and environmental groups so as to give them real power to oversee planning and legislation. This links to the debate about EIA directives and the failure to properly take into account public participation, as they are supposed to, in planning decisions. There is more work to be done in developing a greater civil society and stakeholder oversight of planning and all sorts of aspects of government and regulation. In this debate, I favour the amendments tabled by Deputies Wallace and Daly, as there is more weight behind the argument they make than what the Government is saying. It is not really addressing the issues brought up in the Mahon report and the need to check the abuse of political power in the planning process. We probably need to go beyond even what is in the amendments in terms of deciding how we appoint regulators and ensure they are genuinely independent rather than other types of political appointees who are not really accountable to civil society and stakeholder groups but who end up being rubber-stampers for whatever Government happens to appoint them.

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