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

I am sharing time with Deputies Kelly and Sherlock. We will take about ten minutes each.

This is a very long plan, at 177 pages. In the introductory part on page 17, in a chapter headed "learning from the past", there is a reference to the 2002 national planning strategy as not having been a statutory plan with legislative backing. The text then refers to the Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill 2016 as providing a legislative basis for the new national planning framework. The problem is that this Bill has not yet become law. In section 20C(1) of the Bill, under the heading "Matters to be addressed in National Planning Framework", it states:

Any document, published after the commencement of this Chapter, that amends or replaces the National Spatial Strategy or thereafter revises or replaces the National Planning Framework shall address the matters set out in subsection (2).

Section 20C(2) goes on to list the various matters that are to be addressed under the national planning framework. It is quite clear that the national planning framework was supposed to come after the commencement of the planning Act. I cannot see any way around this except to bring the whole thing back to the Houses of the Oireachtas after the enactment of the Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill 2016. I note that the publication date of that Bill was January 2016. It was published by my colleague, Deputy Alan Kelly, two Ministers ago. I do not think waiting another month or two after more than two years would be too excessive in terms of getting this onto a proper statutory basis.

This is the crux of the problem in respect of the legitimacy of this whole exercise. No matter what Government spin is put on it, it cannot be glossed over. Last Friday in Sligo, we got a non-statutory, ad hocpublication delivered with all the razzmatazz of a vaudeville production. W.B. Yeats, being from Sligo, was quoted at various times during the launch. I am not sure what he would have made of it. I can think of a phrase of his: "to fumble in the greasy till". There was a lot of fumbling in the greasy till with the amount of money that went into that lavish production, not to mention its substantial cast.

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