Pádraig O'Sullivan (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I see that Deputy Pat Buckley is here this morning. The two of us fought in the trenches when the boundary transition between Cork city and county was undertaken in 2017. Will any assessment be undertaken now or at some stage in the future to scrutinise the successes and failures of the expansion of the Cork City Council boundary? The purpose of the question is not to reignite the debate, which goes back to 2016, but is motivated by a genuine desire to undertake an analysis of how the boundary transition has worked or not worked. I live in the new city area. To be fair to Cork City Council, I contend that we have seen an improvement in services locally in Glanmire and other areas such as Blarney, Tower, and towards Donoughmore and Inniscarra.

Any process which involves essentially doubling the population of the city and increasing its size fivefold geographically is bound to pose challenges and I will speak about some of them. Before I give a few examples, I will first say that all citizens of Cork, especially those in transition areas, were told repeatedly that by transferring into a new jurisdiction, the level of service they received would not be affected or diminished in any way. This has not been the case. I have identified a few areas. There are more which we might discuss in future. I highlight development contributions. When the city initially took over large tracts of rural agricultural land in the former county area, there was no policy about planning contributions devised for agricultural buildings. Farmers who were building farm sheds, outhouses and so on were charged commercial rates as if they were building in the city centre. It took about 14 months for that process to be weaned out. That is an example of where the boundary transition did not proceed as smoothly as it could.

A second point relates to planning applications for one-off houses. Many of us speak about the national planning framework and its potential impact on rural housing. Aside from the national planning framework and its impacts, there is clearly a different interpretation of the existing development plan in Cork City Council. The council has a higher success rate in delivering one-off houses in those former rural areas. That is down to a different interpretation of the existing plan.

The third point relates to local improvement schemes, LIS, and community involvement schemes, CIS. There are many roads in rural areas which people pay a contribution towards. They typically pay a contribution of between 10% and 15% to have the roads done. Many of those projects were lined up but unfortunately when the boundary transitioned, the schemes all fell by the wayside. I asked the Minister for Rural and Community Development, Deputy Humphreys, about the issue a number of times via parliamentary questions. She said that perhaps Cork County Council would give some of its budget for CIS and LIS to Cork City Council. That suggestion is not workable. We know that one jurisdiction will not give some of its roads budget away to another jurisdiction.

I will refer to planning enforcement, which is my main motivation for tabling this Topical Issue matter today, after the Minister of State replies. The agreement between the two local authorities was that Cork City Council would take on new planning enforcement files and Cork County Council would continue to engage with active planning enforcement files on its own system. Unfortunately, after the transition, Cork County Council received legal advice that I believe goes against the spirit of the agreement it entered into, that it would now not be the competent authority to prosecute any planning enforcement issues. That is a major cause for concern and goes against the spirit of the agreement.

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