Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This is a very bad way to make planning law. I am saying that as somebody who agreed, albeit reluctantly, to waive pre-legislative scrutiny because I understood the motivation of the Minister was to resolve a number of very important problems, which we wanted to help him resolve. My comments, therefore, are not being made in any opposition to this legislation, but planning law is complex. If planning law is rushed, not properly scrutinised and the decisions we take tonight end up being inadequate, two things will happen. Bad planning decisions will be made and will end up in the courts. We know that from previous rushed planning legislation, whether it was the environmental impact assessment legislation we dealt with in the previous Dáil or, indeed, strategic housing development.

On Committee Stage the Minister asked us to waive pre-legislative scrutiny. We did that, although we agreed to write to some independent planning authorities to seek their advice. The very least the Government should have done was to give us more than 30 minutes to do our job, scrutinise the legislation and tease out these complex issues. Neither Deputy O'Callaghan nor I, who have shared amendments, tabled an excessive number of them. We are not looking to delay this legislation but this is not good practice, particularly in an area of law that is already so fraught.

One of my concerns, and that of other Opposition Deputies, is the growing chorus of Government politicians arguing that because an increasing number of planning applications, particularly under strategic housing developments, end up being judicially reviewed in courts, that somehow we need to change the judicial review process and deny people access to justice. In fact, I have heard some people, including a Minister of State, suggest that people are taking frivolous cases despite the fact that judges in our courts do not allow frivolous cases to be taken. You have to pass a pretty high bar to proceed with a judicial review. The only reason I am saying this, is to urge the Minister please to let us stop making the same mistakes with planning legislation and all the negative consequences that result. This is an issue on which, with respect to this Bill, we are all broadly on the same page as the Minister so our concerns are genuine and I would like him to take those on board.

I will make two general points on the amendments because, unfortunately, we are not going to get to all of them. I will speak about them and raise two very specific concerns and, again, I urge the Minister to work with his officials to try to address them as this legislation is implemented and enacted. The first group of amendments speaks to aspects of this issue, which is to deal with the extension of the time period for a current county development plan. This legislation is about ensuring that local authorities negatively affected by Covid-19 are able to apply for an extension of the time period to complete their development plans. There is no objection or concern about that, but when local authorities are doing that they have to apply for an extension of their existing county development plans.

Those county development plans were made quite some years ago and there could have been significant changes, for example, in the levels of development, in the environment and on information with respect to water quality, sewage or sanitation. Therefore, the extension of an existing plan could see land zoned for residential development extended for a year, without there necessarily being an automatic requirement for a new SEA or AA to assess whether in fact the continued zoning of that land for that purpose is environmentally sustainable. That also means there would be no opportunity for genuinely interested third parties to engage in public consultation, which also falls foul of the Aarhus Convention. That is a very significant omission. That is not an intention of this Bill and I do not think anybody wants that to happen, but it could well be possible and, therefore, the amendments Deputy O'Callaghan and I are proposing aim to resolve that.

The second issue is the extension of planning permissions. One of the major concerns with the extension of planning permissions is if a developer is on site, has been disrupted by Covid and needs a small period of time to extend, that is a reasonable request. However, the provision in this Bill is too broad and does not allow, for example, for public participation. If somebody who is now in the 15th year of their planning permission seeks to extend that for a further two years, there is no facility for interested parties, people who may have the best interests of the community, environmental sustainability and natural wildlife at heart, from bringing issues to the attention of the planning authority for it to take into account. That is in complete contravention, in my view, of the Aarhus Convention and our legal requirements under it. As Deputy O'Callaghan rightly pointed out, we are already in significant breach and despite the fact there has been correspondence between Government and the relevant Aarhus compliance committee, to date, breaches dating as far back as 2016 and 2019 have not been addressed.

These are two fundamental problems with aspects of this legislation. If the Minister gets time to respond, I urge him to put his response to those issues on the record. We want a planning system that is compliant with our international EU obligations, gives adequate access to participation from the public and ensures that as we are developing public infrastructure, economic opportunity or residential development, we do so in a way that is consistent with good environmental practice and meeting our climate change obligations, which is something I am sure the Minister agrees with. I urge him to address those two specific concerns but also to give a commitment that we will not be in this House again this time next year, with half an hour to discuss complex and profound changes to planning that could have unintended consequences because of the lack of adequate scrutiny.

See this speech in context