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

I thank the Minister for his opening remarks. Despite the rather technical and dry nature of this legislation, it is important to remind the House that it has the potential to have profound impacts on the lives of entire communities. We have spoken previously, when we dealt with the predecessor to this legislation and the general scheme of this Bill, about Derrybrien. It is probably one of the most egregious cases we know of. The inadequacies of our planning system and the poor behaviour of a State agency led to a decades-long disruption to communities and their economic and social well-being, as well as to the natural environment. Thankfully, that matter has been almost resolved, although I will come back to one of the outstanding elements in a moment.

When significant changes are being made to planning, with respect to both the provisions of this Bill and the non-consequential amendments, which I will come to, it is always useful to ask why these changes are being made. What was it in our planning system that led to some of these changes? I ask the Minister, in any concluding remarks or in the briefing we get from the officials on Monday, for which I thank him, to provide some additional background information in that regard. That is always helpful in trying to adjudicate on whether the proposals in front of us are sensible and worthy of support.

I have some considerable difficulties with what is in the Bill in front of us, which I will outline for the Minister. I am not convinced, having considered the matter at length during pre-legislative scrutiny, that the removal of the leave to appeal stage is the right approach. Given that part of the purpose of the substitute consent process is to determine whether exceptional circumstances exist, with the benefit of hindsight and consideration, having a leave stage that would allow the board to filter and screen some applications and simply decide not to take them would be sensible. The weakness of the current leave stage, as the Minister said, is in the fact that there is no public participation. Therefore, I urge the Minister to think long and hard about whether this is actually a streamlining. Would it not be better to filter out some of the less deserving cases at a leave stage with public participation, rather than removing the stage overall?

I continue to have a problem with the definition of exceptional circumstances in the primary legislation. It is too vague and too general. In many cases, it will result in substitute consent permissions being granted despite there not being sufficient evidence to determine those grounds as being exceptional.

There is one bit of the Bill I do not accept. I have listened to the Minister's explanation and it is an area I would like officials to give us more information on. I do not understand why we are providing for a new parallel, fast-track planning permission process alongside a decision on substitute consent. In the vast majority of substitute consent cases, these are unauthorised developments.

The people responsible for the developments know they are unauthorised. Why would we reward bad behaviour by giving them access to a fast-track planning process for an additional development in parallel with and before substitute consent is finally decided? I am interested to know where this has come from. I have racked my brains and talked with many planning professionals to see what the origin of this is. It would be great if the Minister's colleague in his concluding remarks and the officials in Monday's briefing would elaborate on this. For example, is substitute consent required for An Bord Pleanála or other peat harvesting? It is not so much for the continuation of peat harvesting, which will not be permissible due to environmental impacts, but there could be infrastructure related to those kinds of unauthorised activities. That infrastructure could require substitute consent, in parallel with a new development, to use the infrastructure for something else. If that is the case there could be merit in that, but I would like to know where the idea of parallel fast-track planning alongside substitute consent has come from before I make a final decision. I am uncomfortable with it at present.

If I am reading the Bill correctly, I see an additional element which was not in the general scheme and therefore was not considered under pre-legislative scrutiny, whereby if somebody has a substitute consent application with the board, then pending substitute consent, a stay can be placed on the board making a decision to allow the applicant to put in a fast-track planning application separately in parallel. The Minister can correct me if that is a misinterpretation of the Bill, but that is how I currently read it. Why is that the case? Why would we not just require that applicant to deal with substitute consent with respect to the unauthorised and, in many cases, illegal development, working its way through the board and to apply separately to the local authority for planning permission, should that be appropriate?

One thing that is not in this Bill, which directly relates to Derrybrien, is what we do about remediation. Derrybrien is an egregious case of somebody being refused substitute consent. Decades of environmental, social and economic damage have been done. That has to be remediated. One useful provision that could be in this Bill would be a requirement for An Bord Pleanála, when making a decision on whether to refuse or accept substitute consent, to set out what remediation is required as a condition. If it does not require any remediation, having that on the public record would be a sensible idea. Members will remember we had a lengthy discussion during pre-legislative scrutiny on the issue of remediation. There is a fear that, while the legislation might deal with the substitute consent process, the matter of who is responsible for remediation of social, economic or environmental damage after a decision is being left unresolved.

On the extension of five to eight weeks, I support any extension of the public participation period. Eight weeks is not enough, if one thinks of the kind of applications we are dealing with. Derrybrien is a case in point because it was a particularly large on-land wind farm with substantial environmental impacts including large mudslides. For community-based organisations, residents and small environmental non-governmental organisations to be able to respond, even within eight weeks, to such large, complex and technical planning applications or, in this case, substitute consent decisions, is not reasonable. I am not saying that it should be unlimited. The Minister could set a minimum but the board could have discretion to give additional time in very complex cases to allow for full and adequate public participation. I know the Minister is going to set that by way of regulation. I ask him to look at setting a minimum time with discretion for the board to provide more. Think of some of the very complex wind farm and offshore wind farm projects that we will be dealing with. We want to make sure that we have adequate public participation in those so that we get those planning permissions right, because our renewable energy targets are heavily dependent on offshore wind energy being achieved. Therefore, a greater level of public participation at the earliest possible stage is always preferable.

With respect to the amendments, I fully understand that some things have to be done. I am not looking to delay anything, but I suspect that when we see these amendments, they will probably be almost the same length as the Bill itself. I have had this conversation with every Minister responsible for housing at the end of almost every Dáil term since I became a Deputy in this House. Planning is incredibly complex and technical. That is one reason why the Attorney General is doing the comprehensive review of the Planning and Development Act. It is not good practice to have very limited scrutiny for changes of a significant nature. That includes changes that I might fully support. A number of the changes the Minister has outlined, although with very limited information, sound potentially positive, but if we are to do our job properly and ensure that the decisions of this House, whether based on a decision between Opposition and Government or on a consensus, lobbing in a bunch of amendments at the very last moment with limited time to consider them is a real problem. I acknowledge that the Minister, or his Secretary General, responded quickly to the requests the chair and I made for briefings. That was welcome. If we could have more than half an hour or an hour, some of us would appreciate that.

I ask the Minister, in his discussions with the Chief Whip and his colleagues before next week's business is set, to give us the maximum amount of time to go through these. If they are sensible, required amendments, the Minister will not find us in this House playing politics, but we need time to go through them to be able to tease them out, as we ordinarily would on Committee Stage, or possibly even to amend some amendments if required once we see them. I am open to the proposals relating to the ministerial direction and the design envelope. The devil is in the detail. The industry made a strong case about the design envelope during pre-legislative scrutiny, but much of that will depend on what is in the legislation. The fear I have always had about offshore wind legislation is that, if we do not get the process, we will end up with a similar issue to that of strategic housing developments, with projects being judicially reviewed and delayed. We all want to avoid that. We want the offshore wind farm projects to be right. Therefore, the detail of what the design envelope permits or not, the degree of flexibility and the impact of the long-term nature of the project on marine biodiversity, inshore fishermen and local communities is significant. I am expressing some reservation without knowing the details, only because I want to get it right.

On the judicial reviews, a shiver goes down my spine when I hear the word "streamlining", until I hear the detail. I am nervous of where the Government may or may not be going with this. I note that in his speech, the Minister identified the sections he was thinking of amending rather than explaining the detail. If the Minister of State who is closing the date, whether it is Deputy Peter Burke or Deputy Malcolm Noonan, could give us more detail on that, it would be fine. If not, I ask the officials to note that we will heavily scrutinise this area during the briefing session on Monday.

Valuations have been discussed before and seem relatively straightforward, so I am less concerned about them. We worked on short-term letting before and we want to work with the Minister on it, so the more detail we have, the better. On the matter of the Maritime Area Planning Act, never mind the word "streamlining", when I hear that amendments are only technical amendments to planning, I am also nervous. Part of the point of planning is that it is technical. I am not suggesting that anybody is trying to do anything untoward. If technical changes are got wrong, they can have a profound and negative impact. Part of the reason why we had the last substitute consent legislation and why we had this is that it was not got right in the original process, with all its various negative outworkings.

I know the Minister's officials are exceptionally busy because, like his two predecessors, he puts enormous pressure on them at the end of the Dáil term to produce significant legislative change in a short time. They have my sympathy in that respect. Try to give us the maximum amount of time possible on Monday, because I presume this will be on the floor of the Dáil next week, so that we can have an exchange. The Minister can clarify matters further on Committee Stage.

I am concerned that we are still not getting the substance of substitute consent right and that the Bill as it currently stands will fall foul of challenges at a later stage. We may well be back here in a year or two with another substitute consent Bill with further changes because we did not have adequate time to scrutinise, amend and improve this, especially the parallel planning permission process, for pending and for future subsequent consent applications.

This is extremely problematic in the context of remediation and the length of time for public participation. I am being collegial here. We want to work with the Minister on the matter but there is still some way to go. Obviously, we reserve the right, between now and Monday, to table our own amendments and amendments to the Minister's amendments, if required, when we see them.

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