Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This Bill has been a few years going through this House. I thank everybody for giving of their time tonight, and probably tomorrow and later next week, to deal with this Bill. I am pleased we are here discussing the amendments to this Bill, which was initiated in this House in January 2016. It predated my time in this Department.

Everybody in the House is familiar with the purpose and the provisions of the Bill and, therefore, I will not go into great detail in that regard except to underline that the primary purpose of this Bill is to give legislative effect to key planning recommendations of the Mahon tribunal report, including the establishment of a new independent office of the planning regulator and placing the new national planning framework on a statutory footing. The Bill also provides for other updates to the Planning and Development Act 2000, as amended, to deliver greater transparency, efficiency and integrity in the planning system, including giving legislative effect to all other planning related recommendations of the Mahon tribunal report.

As the Bill was originally published in January 2016, it is at this stage important that it be enacted as urgently as possible to give legal effect to various provisions and, in particular, to facilitate the establishment of the office of the planning regulator.

The Bill concluded its passage through the Seanad in June 2018 and today we have 82 amendments that we are bring back to this House. Of those 77 are Government amendments. Our intention is that the overall Bill will strengthen our planning system by implementing them. There are also five non-Govenment amendments and we are not recommending that we accept all of those, but that we would accept perhaps one of them and change the other ones, if possible.

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