Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This is a very important debate. Like my constituency colleague, Deputy Ó Murchú, I will speak about representations I have received from people who live in the rural community, in Cooley particularly. Today, I got an analysis from people in a running club in Cooley who are very concerned about the future membership of their club and wanting to living in the area, schools and so on. A school in Cooley, which we know quite well, lost two teachers this year because of population reduction in the area which has created a major problem for the school.

There is a serious issue in the planning process. I fully accept that given the present situation, it would be irresponsible for any local authority to hold a public meeting. It would be toxic in every respect. The issue here is broader than the public meeting. The intent is to get a public debate going and to be able to listen to and articulate the views of the communities. Such debate has been destroyed by Covid. Louth County Council is certainly doing its best to provide that Zoom meetings. Officials are available at the end of a telephone and so on. However, there is a deficit in the debate. The public meeting does not necessarily allow that to happen in the context of the interests of the people. I have been around for quite a few years and I know that with public meetings and development plans, communities do not really understand the principles involved when no proposal is before them. Deputy Ó Broin is right in saying that serious controversies arise in respect of county council section 4 appeals as they were in the past, High Court actions and judicial reviews. It is about getting the community buy-in. The motive of the public meeting and the changes, which of necessity will take place, lead into that area.

There is a democratic deficit in the engagement. I know the law is there and anyone who wants to can make those views known. It is too late now to engage the public in a new and better way. In reality people do not buy and read local newspapers much. Local radio is a very good forum for debate. I do not know if local authorities take out advertisements on billboards on the side of the road to alert people to those things. They are not too expensive to run for a couple of weeks leading up to the end of a plan period or indeed at the commencement of it to get people's voices heard.

At the end of it all, I support the intention here. Deputy Ó Murchú is saying what I am also hearing from Cooley, that communities are concerned. There are urban-based communities in and around the bigger towns. In a peninsula like Cooley, many people work in Dundalk. I do not say this in any way an insulting sense. I do not want people to misunderstand what I am saying, but they have their own engagement and their own future, separate and distinct. They want to retain that culture. They want to live in that area if they can at all.

The other point I hear strongly is that if land is zoned in development plans and it is not built on in the course of that development plan, people are saying to me that they want to live there. With that land not being developed, they need to move further away from where they would like to live. I support the programme for Government commitment that serviced sites at reasonable cost will be made available to people to live in rural communities. We need to fast-track that plan nationally for the communities which are affected by what is happening. They are also affected by Covid because they cannot travel the way that they used to. That may be a good thing in itself because it reduces commuting to work with many more people working at home. The underlying demographic issues need to be addressed.

We need to engage constructively and use our imagination in looking again at certain communities that are not totally urban-based. We need to respect, support and hold them dear. The Department of Education can provide an A to Z of the rural schools that are threatened or that are more likely to be threatened in the next four to five years. We can sustain those rural communities by ensuring a different planning regime that does not allow houses all over the place and demand for services that are unreasonable and unacceptable but at the same time nurtures and supports communities that need it and want it. That is where we need to go, and this is an important debate.

There are many benefits to holding public meetings, but it is not possible right now. The principle is right. I agree with Deputy Mattie McGrath about getting the public engagement to get them on board. We need to ensure that everybody's views are heard appropriately.

One of the problems with the Planning and Development Acts is that far too much of the power is concentrated on national policy and dictated down to the local authority, ending up with councillors in conflict with those in the local authority administration. They all believe the planning regulator will overrule whatever they want. That is not how it should be. It should be done in such a way that can identify and analyse communities and make them accountable in the infrastructure: the shops that have closed, the schools that are under threat etc. That might be a much more constructive engagement by planners and Departments.

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