Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for allowing my colleagues and me to switch around. We thought there was a second round of speaking slots. These Bills are being rushed through. It is always near the end of the term that they come into the House. The Wednesday night guillotine, with all Stages being taken, is not good enough. This Bill has serious implications for every man, woman and child in the country who wants a house, including the many noble people who need a house from their local authority. They are entitled to that, but those houses are not being built either.

The establishment of rural planning commissions is very important. The role of An Bord Pleanála is hugely important. However, the role of An Taisce as a prescribed body under the planning Acts should be removed. There are concerns around the Office of the Planning Regulator. We never had such a role until quite recently. The CEO must be very fond of me because he has written to me approximately six times asking me to meet him. Deputy Verona Murphy and her group met with people from his office and had many issues with them. We did not need an Office of the Planning Regulator. It is another quango with a brass plate beside the front door and a nice set-up of staff. The CEO is diminishing the role of the county councils.

I am shocked and aghast at what is happening in Cahir. My daughter, Máirín, is a representative of the town on Tipperary County Council and, week in and week out, the development plan is being reviewed. There is workshop after workshop. You would think they were building houses inside in the workshops. Nothing is held out in the open. When I was on the county council, fortunately, all our meetings, other than one annual meeting for a financial workshop, were held in public and open to the press. Why the secrecy and the cloak and dagger?

The Cahir town plan was finished a couple of months ago. Many residents in the Mountain View Drive and Mountain Road area made submissions on that plan. It was decided to dezone 50 ha out of the 60 ha that were to be zoned, leaving only 10 ha. I was involved with many landowners there who have wanted to develop community-type voluntary housing and everything else for the past 15 years. They could not do so because of the poor standard of the Mountain Road, which is too narrow and has no access road. There is still no access road. It was included in a previous plan but has been taken out under the new Cahir plan.

Hey presto, the council came along last week, after four weeks, and made a new announcement about the Cahir development plan. There is a public meeting in the town this coming Thursday evening, which means I will not be in the House, to discuss the council's proposal to build 43 houses on the green area in Mountain View Drive. It wants to build on the green playing fields, while 50 ha elsewhere were dezoned. This is madness and it flies in the face of all the refusals and rebuttals the council gave to people wanting to build private houses. No development was allowed to come down Mountain Road and it still cannot. An ambulance got stuck there last week. I salute Niamh Killeen and the others who organised the meeting for this Thursday. They all made submissions on the Cahir town plan but were ignored. Where is the democracy in that process? It is not fit for purpose.

Cormack Drive in Nenagh underwent development some years ago under the provisions of Part V of the Planning and Development Act 2000, as amended, but it was never properly finished. In fact, as I recall, that development was done under Part 8 of the Planning and Development Regulations 2001, as amended. The residents were forced to take a court case in the past year because it was not concluded. A silence has since descended because the court case has ended and there was a vow of secrecy by the people who took it. The council messed around and did not complete the Part 8 process properly. Now, without admitting liability, it is saying, "Come on, lads, we will pay the expenses if you go away." This is no way to treat people and communities. Good people live in those housing estates and they want to have them kept right, not see building happening on every bit of green land, especially at a time when so much land is being dezoned. I do not know what is going on.

I know the Green Party and others have a big issue about rezoning but, as Deputy Danny Healy-Rae said, why is some land not being left rezoned, instead of pushing everything in together? The Office of the Planning Regulator is insisting on massive-density developments, which have proved disastrous in the past. I am aghast to hear Deputy Verona Murphy say that the county manager in Wexford told her she had no authority to make any submission on, or have any input into, the county development plan. Under the abolition of the dual mandate, we, as Oireachtas Members, are allowed to have full access. We cannot go to meetings but we can attend them and speak at them. The county managers do not want us there because we might take too much information back to the councillors.

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